


Me and You (is who the future belongs to)

by melonbutterfly



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Arranged Marriage, Culture Shock, Fluff, Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 03:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbutterfly/pseuds/melonbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is in for quite a culture shock when he leaves for Jötunheimr to meet his soulmate for the first time, especially since what little he knows of the place is hearsay passed on through Æsir, who aren't exactly neutral on the subject. But he wouldn't be Tony Stark if he didn't roll with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Me and You (is who the future belongs to)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> This is what happens when somebody writes "world building" and "detailed representation of Jotun culture" in their "Likes" list. I'm a little embarrassed about the length to be honest, I hope you don't mind, dear Afloatingsubmariner!
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> **Re: Underage warning: they're both fifteen. Nothing graphic happens but innuendos are made.**

Anthony Edward Stark, son of Howard and Maria Stark, is born on May twenty-ninth with an empty wrist. It's not a strange thing at all; those born before their soulmates all show blank skin where their soulmate's name should be. If by the time Anthony reaches the double-digits his wrist still bears no name people will start to look at him with pity, and after that he only has a few short years before everyone will assume his soulmate died before Anthony was born.

This is a destiny Tony is spared from, though sometimes he wishes he hadn't been. But exactly two weeks and three hours (plus minus a few minutes) after he was born, little Anthony, at the time in a cranky mood, falls silent mid-wail, flails a little, and the falls asleep. His mother for a moment thinks he died (SIDS isn't sudden onset though, is it?) but when she checks on him, she finds that a rune has appeared on her son's wrist, right above where his pulse beats steady under the skin.

A _rune_. At first she and everyone she tells – which is, frankly, _everyone_ – are delighted. Runes mean gods, inasmuch as one might refer to them as gods – some people's ancestors used to worship them, but these days there are things like treaties and alliances and pacts of non-interference, sobering the mysticism and nebulous devotion until the aura of secrecy and worship has waned somewhat. Still, being bound to, in essence, a _god_ is miles more prestigious than being bound to a mere human, if only for the fact that so few humans ever end up being bound to one of them. Thus, from the third week of his life to his fifth birthday, people try to become friends with Tony and or his parents in the hopes of scouring something like gold or immortality or just a trip to Asgard at one point in the future.

Shortly after Tony's fifth birthday, however, a girl is born bearing Asgard's crown prince's rune on her wrist, and within hours of her birth Odin himself appears at her hospital bed to confirm the birth of Asgard's new queen. Tony's parents use the opportunity and the connections they have made through their son's connection to Asgard to speak to Odin in person and ask him who the rune on Tony's wrist belongs to. Odin takes one look at it and says that it's Loki, heir apparent to Jötunheimr's throne, casually destroying all of Maria and Howard's hopes and dreams, not to mention all those people who had been hoping to gain from the Stark-Asgard connection.

If Midgard's knowledge of the true going ons at Asgard could fit into a soup ladle, what they know of Jötunheimr in comparison could fit into an espresso spoon. And what Midgard knows of Asgard could not fit into a soup ladle; it would at best fill a table spoon. And most of that is hearsay and myth, because the few people known in human history who ended up mated to an Æsir (less than a dozen, incidentally there is no record of a Frost Giant soulmate) didn't end up gossiping about Asgard, if they came back at all. One of the reasons why Tony scoffs every time he thinks about the people buttering his parents up, or his parents buttering _him_ up, hoping to score a favour at an indefinite point in the future. There is no precedent for it and it's, frankly, ridiculous.

His parents try to keep the news of Tony's actual soulmate under wraps, but with such a hot piece of gossip, that proves an entirely futile endeavor and within the week seemingly every person on the planet knows. The general reactions fall into one or more of three main categories: schadenfreude, pity and the third one Tony calls fear slash anger, as he can never figure out which it is and the two seem to go hand in hand more often than not. It's those people that send Tony death threats, and that's also the category his parents end up in. Like it's Tony's fault they drew premature, biased conclusions and were too dumb to think logically.

General consensus is, Tony is basically doomed. What little people know of Jötunheimr and its native residents is not complimentary; it's a frozen wasteland stuck in a perpetual twilight state and its inhabitants are savage, wild and altogether weak-willed cowards. Considering that their knowledge is based solely on accounts passed on by Æsir, who used to be at war with Jötunheimr, there recently have been a few voices who have cast doubts on these assertions, but it's nevertheless generally accepted that Tony is pretty much doomed. What bad luck to be soulmates with a Frost Giant.

Tony mostly doesn't remember many specifics, but he notes a distinct drop in pandering to his five-years-old whims both by his parents and the general public, which to him then was everybody else. His teachers would alternately be more strict and more forgiving with him, based on their personal opinion whether Tony was to be pitied or sneered at for his fate. His parents immediately move on to trying to conceive another child – when the heir apparent of the Stark legacy was bound for Asgard there was not much of an issue, but nobody expects to see Tony again once he leaves the planet and his father wants a real heir. That doesn't happen, and by the time Tony is seven his parents' marriage is corroded, completely disintegrated anywhere but on paper by the time he's fifteen. That his father fails to produce an heir with anybody else, not for lack of trying mind, casts brief doubt on Tony's legitimacy at one point, but a DNA test quickly disproves that theory. Not that it does Tony much good either way; his father is as interested in him as he is in a doorknob. His mother sometimes remembers to pay attention to him, but that's generally when she's in the company of people who call him "poor Tony" like it's a double name.

 _Poor Tony_ grows thoroughly sick of hearing that. Mind, he isn't looking forwards at all to meeting his soulmate, much less going to live with them, but he highly doubts his soulmate – Loki, whose rune is forever engraved into Tony's wrist – would agree to moving to Midgard instead. Everybody knows that Asgard and all the other realms (though apart from Asgard, they're all populated by savages) consider Midgard backwards and underdeveloped, Midgardians generally chaotic and altogether not overly interesting. The attitude, having experienced it first-hand every now and then when some Æsir sent by Odin came to check on Jane, who against all odds had become something of a best friend to Tony, pisses him off to no ends. Half the time the Æsir come along on _horses_ for fuck's sake, wearing old-fashioned armor and metal helmets like they fell off some sort of renaissance fair, and they came along looking exactly the same a thousand years ago. As far as Tony, as anyone can tell, Asgard is as stagnant as a society could possibly be. Whereas Midgard? Went through an abundance of monumental changes since they first came into contact with Asgard (or the other way around, rather). And all on its own power, because of course Asgard wouldn't get involved in anything. They didn't care about pandemics or wars, didn't lift a finger when they could have easily helped, but in the end humanity made it to this level all on its own. They went from the first actual manned flight to a man on the moon in about a hundred years, for fuck's sake. Does it look like they need Asgard?

No, they don't. And Tony, he's going to show them. He doesn't know what's going to happen to him when he gets to Jötunheimr, but he's been preparing since he was five, which amounts to a solid ten years of effort. Sure, the first couple of years were pretty infantile and clumsy, Tony had to primarily teach himself as he was miles ahead of the crap they tried to drill into his head at school and his father had absolutely no interest to teach his waste of a son that he would never see again once he was shipped off to Jötunheimr. But he'd had some solid ideas even then, and other than that Tony has a genius-level intellect – never certified because fuck you, that's why – a great allowance managed by a servant who loved Tony but knew better than to try to curtail him in this, and a lot of time born form the fact that few people paid attention to him. From being sent to boarding school due to his dad accidentally paying attention once to the letters Tony's school sent to him, Tony learned that attendance records mattered more than he would like, but nobody could compel him to pay attention to the subject matter at hand, and if Tony's grades were so bad the only thing that was saving him from having to repeat a year were his excellent science grades, well. Jarvis was the one to sign his report cards, and apart from being Tony's manservant/nanny/the closest to an authority figure Tony would ever get, he didn't have any actual authority over him. Tony chose to listen to him more often than not primarily because he knew that Jarvis was the one who cared the most about Tony, but in the end that didn't amount to much.

Tony has a plan, is the thing. He's going to show Jötunheimr to underestimate a Midgardian; he's going to show them all.

When it's time, Jarvis doesn't come with Tony. Only Tony's parents are allowed to accompany him by virtue of each having contributed half their DNA to make him, which as far as Tony is being concerned, was the most involved in parenthood as they ever were. Both of them choose to come, though it's not because they want to support Tony or anything like that – Tony can't even remember the last time he had a proper conversation with either of his parents. No, what drives them to come is mere curiosity – his father's scientific, his mother's more so she can say she's been there than anything else. Tony can't even say he really minds; he knows them well enough not to.

Going to Jötunheimr involves going to Asgard first, because apparently the peace treaty between the two involves no Jötnar stepping foot on Midgard, going back to a thousand years ago when Jötunheimr invaded Midgard in order to provoke Asgard into a fight and a huge battle was fought between the two. Nobody even knew the Jötnar weren't allowed to come to Midgard as per Asgard's orders but once they hear – Tony is fourteen and an Æsir warrior informs him of how his transfer will proceed without bothering to seek privacy first, so of course the whole world knows what's going on within the day – everyone is delighted. Asgard is protecting Midgard, they say. Tony figures it's rather a strategic thing, if not merely a way to rub in that Jötunheimr lost that particular battle. He highly doubts Asgard actually cares about Midgard.

In any case, that's how Tony finds himself standing in the desert in a weird circle of symbols, two big suitcases full of electronics and nothing else – he figures if Loki wants for him to be dressed he can very well supply the clothes for Tony, being heir apparent and all – plus his parents, and a whole army of photographers and film crews and reporters and spectators at something resembling a respectable distance, there to witness his leaving Midgard. Possibly, probably, forever.

Which, well. Tony has known all his life that Midgard wouldn't be his forever home. His soulmate is a Frost Giant, for fuck's sake. So even if he had wanted to – which he didn't, really not – he would have known not to get attached out of mere self-preservation. But even if Midgard hasn't been particularly nice to him (and outlawed all the fun stuff until he's at least eighteen, meaning by fifteen Tony already has a nice stack of arrests and misdemeanors because he figured he wouldn't get to do it otherwise, seeing as he wouldn't be on the planet by the time he turned legal) Tony still feels something of a pang in his chest. Yeah, he isn't really fond of this place and the people, at least the vast majority of them, but it's still his home. He doesn't know anything else. Asgard would have been scary enough – even if Jane stubbornly refuses to admit it – but Jötunheimr? Virtually all Tony knows about this place is that it's cold, dark and populated by semi-hostiles. Anybody would be worried.

Tony knows better than to show it, though. He stubbornly raises his chin and ignores his mother, who hisses to him something about his attire. She's dressed in an elegant fur coat over something semi-fancy, his father clad in a suit and coat as well. They must be seriously overheating, hello, desert and all, but that's not why Tony refused to wear a coat or even anything else but his normal jeans and t-shirt combo. He refuses to dress up for this occasion; as if anybody is going to care what he wears anyway.

They wait for the bifrost to activate while the press shout questions at them, not daring to come closer but still trying to get some last soundbite. Maria is smiling and waving regally, one heavy hand on Tony's shoulder, while Howard is fiddling with some scanner and not paying anybody any mind. Tony stands there with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face, knowing he looks like a pissy teenager and not caring one iota because guess what, that's exactly what he is.

Suddenly there is a whooshing sound and Tony feels a gust of wind in his face, a whirl of bright colors streaking in front of his eyes. It doesn't feel like he's lifting off but suddenly there is nothing underneath his feet, and he makes the mistake of looking down only to see the same whirl of colors he sees in front of his eyes; it's like he was sucked into a color vortex. It's nauseating, but closing his eyes only makes him more sick because it feels like nothing, absolutely nothing is happening at all, a too stark contrast between the dizzying activity of light and colors he sees when opening his eyes. Fucking rainbow bridge.

As quickly as it started it's over again and Tony has solid ground under his feet again, something pushing him forward and making him stumble. He lands in a gangly heap on a shiny, very smooth floor, but his first concern are his suitcases. They got a little scrambled too but nothing fell open and they don't look damaged, thank god.

Only once Tony has assured himself that his possessions are okay does he look up, to find himself the sole focus of attention of... a surprising number of people, actually. There is Odin, whom he immediately recognizes even though it's been ten years; that imposing figure isn't something a person forgets. There are a handful of guards, at least a dozen, looking menacing with more armor than Tony is used to, spears and stiff expressions. There are his parents, his mother looking embarrassed and pissed at Tony's lack of decorum, his father once again occupied with his scanner. There is a guy loitering in the background, blond and a couple of years older than Tony, looking like he's somewhere he shouldn't be. And there are two mostly naked tall, large, blue guys with horns, red eyes and sneering expressions. Frost Giants indeed.

Tony gets up and brushes some invisible dust off his shoulder. "Well?"

Everybody jolts into movement, as in Odin steps forwards and holds something of a speech, something about this union being proof that peace between the realms is prospering, blah blah blah, and it all ends in the conclusion that Tony is to go off to Jötunheimr with the two Frost Giants alone for company, everybody else will stay behind as per some treaties or whatever. Neither of his parents look too broken up about it; his father got enough data from the trip to Asgard and his mother is satisfied with the street cred having been to Asgard will afford her, even if she didn't actually see much of it at all: neither of them feel the need to go to a frozen wasteland. Tony doesn't feel the need for them to come with him either, but he still has to swallow at the bitter aftertaste in his mouth. Figures they couldn't even pretend to care about him long enough to see him off safely. The only reason they actually say good-bye to him is because Odin and the others look sort of expectant. Maria hugs him awkwardly, seeming surprised at how tall Tony is, and his father shakes his hand and says, "Do the name Stark proud."

Tony couldn't care less about the Stark name. He smiles and says "sure", and if it comes out sounding a lot like "fuck you", well. The only reason he didn't actually say that is because he will probably never see his parents again.

Then Odin is saying "It is time" while the two Frost Giants step up to Tony, not giving a fuck about his suitcases so he has to lift them himself. Boy, is he looking forwards to this whole soulmate to the crown prince thing.

They step up to the whirl thing Tony and his parents came out of – out of the corners of his eyes Tony spots his parents scurrying out of the way, his mother looking a mix between terrified and repulsed at the sight of the two huge, bald, horned Frost Giants. Tony doesn't think they're particularly hot either, too surly and burly, though the skin tone certainly is intriguing. He's just wondering how this whole soulmate thing is supposed to work out, because the crown of his head maybe reaches to the beginning of the two Frost Giants' sternum and while he's still hoping for a surprise growth spurt to come out of nowhere and give him a couple more inches in height, that would still make him significantly less tall than Loki. They're probably going to look ridiculous. Well, that probably won't be their biggest problem anyway, no pun intended, so whatever.

They land on a plane of ice. A huge, seemingly endless one, reaching as far as Tony can't see which isn't very far because it's snowing slightly and, more importantly, dark. Twilight. The sky is a dark, greyish blue, stars or something like a moon, much less the sun, either not available at all or hidden by clouds. Tony suspects the latter because the former is neigh on impossible. An icy wind blows, fast enough that it feels sharp on Tony's skin and makes his eyes tear up, and within seconds he's absolutely freezing. Much longer in these temperatures dressed like he is and he'll actually die from exposure.

The Frost Giants don't seem to care; they just start walking. Tony, who dropped his suitcases to wrap his arms around himself in order to preserve warmth, futile as it is, scowls and looks after them. "Yeah, thanks for the assist, I really appreciate how welcoming you're being! Assholes," he mutters to himself, looking around. "So let me freeze out here, what fucking ever. Who the fuck cares?"

"It's not my preferred scenario," a different voice speaks up, making Tony jump and whirl around. The motion skews his balance a little, something which wouldn't be so bad if he weren't wearing sneakers and standing on ice. All the rubber soles apparently needed was a little bit of friction to completely lose their footing, and Tony might have managed to regain his balance if it weren't for the suitcases; he stumbles over one of them and falls. For a split second before he hits the ground he has a mental image of hitting his head hard enough to pass out, or better yet, get amnesia; neither sounds like too bad an idea right now. The former would save him from whatever is coming for a little longer, the latter would, well. Save him from it semi-permanently. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how one chooses to look at it – neither happens. Instead Tony, for the second time today, lands in an ungainly heap on the floor, only this time the floor is literally ice and abrasive, meaning his arm, instinctively stretched out to catch his fall, gets scratched up on top of bruised and man, the ice _burns_ , Tony didn't know it could do that.

"Fuck." Not particularly enjoying his impromptu cuddling session with the icy ground, Tony scrambles up again, staring in dismay at the blood sluggishly welling up from numerous little cuts on his palm and along his forearm. His whole body is shaking, like all it needed was the jolt of adrenaline to realize it's really fucking freezing and he's trembling, teeth shattering, and he can only think that he's glad that he had the foresight to not only cushion his suitcases, but also insulate them. Such an abrupt drop in temperature wouldn't be good for the electronics inside, no matter that Tony built them especially with Jötunheimr's rumored freezing temperatures in mind.

"Are all Midgardians this clumsy?"

Tony looks up to find himself face to face with a guy who is a lot smaller than the two Frost Giants who picked him up, if no less blue – as far as Tony can tell, in any case, because the asshole is wearing a fur coat that Tony briefly considers killing him for. He actually has hair, inky black and whipping in the wind, and two small horns at the top of his forehead. They actually look sort of cute, like baby goats horns. Tony stares for a moment before he remembers, right. The asshole just snarked at him and is making no move to assist Tony or do anything else vaguely helpful, like point him in the right direction or stab him in the throat. "I don't know, are all Jötnar this rude?"

The guy is frowning, and Tony pretends it's the cold that's making his heart beat so fast; the wind is blowing through the thin cloth of his t-shirt like it's not even there and he's shaking pretty violently. His teeth are clacking together too hard for him to do anything about it; clenching his jaw makes it a little less embarrassing but the sound doesn't stop. And yet all Tony can do is stare at the guy and try to pretend he doesn't know exactly who that is, that the way his heart is beating hard and powerful in his chest has nothing to do with anything, that being stabbed in the throat has become both more attractive an option – so long as it's the guy doing it – and less so, because yeah. That's Loki, and he doesn't look half as intimidating and alien as the two Frost Giants who accompanied Tony from Asgard did. Tony sort of wants to nibble along the sharp line of Loki's jaw, see what that blue skin tastes like.

Loki – for it's becoming increasingly pointless pretending Tony doesn't know exactly who it is – frowns and mutters something Tony can't understand over the sound of the wind in his ears, and then he steps closer while shrugging the long, luxurious fur coat off and fuck, it's not only fur on the outside but on the inside as well, and then he's wrapping it around Tony's shoulders, pulling the collar closed. When Tony fails to put his arms in the sleeves – his brain isn't working properly right now, it's the cold, okay? – the horizontal line between his eyebrows deepens and Loki reaches into the coat, guiding Tony's arms into the sleeves before closing the coat with two rows of buttons hidden in the fur. Warmth is already seeping into Tony's skin; the coat is almost hot, the soft fur containing heat like nothing Tony has ever seen or felt before. He moans, closing his eyes as his skin prickles, breathes in the faintly musky scent of the silky fur that tickles along his jaw. Tony has led a sheltered life, didn't want for much materially speaking, but he has never felt anything as luxurious as this fur coat.

"Ridiculous," Loki mutters, still scowling, and reaches over Tony's shoulders to pull up a hood that might not be as warm as the inside of the coat, but with the rest of Tony's body rapidly warming up, his head doesn't have many problems with doing the rest of the work. His ears ache, and his heart is still beating so fast, and in front of him stands Loki, brows furrowed and red eyes trained on Tony, observing him closely in case Tony is in danger of falling over (again) or something. Tony's brain still hasn't caught up with the current situation, that's his excuse for why he smiles a little doofily and says "Thanks" like Loki did anything but keep him from freezing to death.

Loki's lower lip pushes forwards. "I didn't know the temperature is _that_ bad for Midgardians. How do you survive with such delicate bodies?"

"In nicer climates, for one," Tony replies, inclined to overlook the insult because this fur coat is amazing and Loki will have to pry it out of Tony's dead, cold hands if he ever wants it back. Which, so long as Tony has this coat, isn't going to happen because it's warm as hell. Even his face barely gets brushed by the wind, the fur of the hood somehow frames his head in such a way that the wind gets redirected before it gets to Tony's bare skin. His hands are buried somewhere in the too long sleeves, pulse throbbing in his fingertips as they warm up, the beat in time with the throbbing in his ears and in his chest. Even his feet are good, because the coat is huge and pools on the ice a little.

Loki sighs audibly. "This might make things a little more complicated. Is the fur enough? Are you going to die?"

"No." Tony rolls his eyes up. "The coat is great, I'm keeping it."

And the scowl is back. "You most certainly are not. This is my birth fur." At Tony's uncomprehending stare, Loki pushes his lower lip forwards again. Tony has the feeling Loki is under the impression it makes him look irate, but it really just looks like an epic pout. Sort of cute, actually. "My mother hunted this for me when I survived my birthseason. You... part of our binding ceremony involves... you are clearly too delicate for this, but I will hunt a fur and gift it to you upon the occasion of our binding."

Okay, there it is again. Tony ignores the curious rippling of warmth in his bell in favor of his irritation. "Okay, you can stop calling me delicate now. I'm simply not built for these temperatures. I bet if I took you to Florida you'd do really awfully there, not to mention the desert or something, so delicateness is relative, okay? Secondly, our binding ceremony – there will be a hunt or how am I to understand this."

Loki looks displeased with the way the conversation is going, but only slightly grudgingly explains. "Our binding ceremony is part of the keskikesä festival, the mid-season celebration. As such, our binding ceremony closely entwines with the celebration. Keskikesä and our binding both involve a hunt, and the one who returns with the largest game receives rights to pick the best pieces of meat for their mate as part of keskikesä. Those participating in the binding hunt exclusively for their mate, however, and the fur is a gift." He pauses for a moment. "Though I do no see how you are going to successfully participate in a hunt, if you cannot even subside in these temperatures for a mere handful of minutes. Allowance might have to be made due to the fact that you are Midgardian."

"Right. Don't worry about it, I'll do it." Tony wasn't explicitly prepared for hunting, but he was prepared for a lot, and he has a few aces up his sleeve. "I can wear what I want during the hunt, right?"

Again Loki scowls. "You will not take my birthfur on a hunt. I won't allow it."

"Wasn't planning on it, calm down." Rolling his eyes, Tony looks around a little. It still looks as shady as it did when he arrived, literally. He can't see much. "So, are we going to stand around here forever or what?"

"Yes," Loki deadpans. "Our feet will fuse with the ground and we shall remain here forever, like your trees." He rolls his eyes and steps past Tony. "Follow me."

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit!" Tony calls after him before reaching down for his suitcases. When the icy plastic of the handle comes into contact with his not quite toasty, but nicely warm skin he curses and flinches away before scowling. How the hell is it possible for plastic to be too cold to touch? This place is a menace. Tony sure hopes they have houses or something that are warmer on the inside.

"Are you coming?" Loki calls out impatiently.

"Give me a minute here," Tony calls back, frowning down on his suitcases. There's nothing for it, he'll have to touch them; the fur coat is too thick to wind around his fingers and then through the handle. He's just genuinely worried his skin will get frost bite or something.

A softly uttered curse reaches his ears, mostly because Loki is suddenly there again, reaching out to touch each suitcase, and suddenly they lift off the ground and sort of hover in the air, completely unaffected by the wind.

"...the hell?" Tony utters in his surprise, but of course, magic. Right. He knew it exists; there are a couple of X-men who use it, after all, not to mention Asgard and apparently Jötunheimr too. His father's firm belief is that it's still physics in some way, but, yeah, magic. "Huh. Thanks."

"Tell me again how Jötnar are rude," Loki nags, actually hooking his hand in the crook of Tony's arm and pulling him along, the suitcases trailing after them like obedient puppies.

"Really though, I've met three of you and so far two have left me to die and the third is... well, not too bad, I guess." Loki did give him the coat, and is now making his suitcases literally come along. He's also mostly naked, Tony suddenly realizes, peering appreciatively through the fur of his hood. Like the other two Frost Giants, who were probably guards though they didn't do such a great job at guarding Tony, abandoning him literally the first chance they got as they did, Loki is wearing what amounts to hotpants, looking none the worse for it despite the icy temperatures. His breath doesn't even turn to clouds in the air, as far as Tony can tell, whereas Tony huffs and puffs like a steam-powered engine.

"No Jötnar forced to visit Asgard is going to appreciate the cause," Loki sneers.

Okay then. Tony can't say he's surprised at the hostility, what with the war and stuff. "We're not going to go there, I take it."

Spine stiffening, Loki pulls his arm from Tony's elbow. "Most certainly not." When he turns his head to look at Tony, his ruby red eyes are blazing. "Why, do you wish to?"

"Not particularly." Tony raises one eyebrow. "I don't know much more about Asgard than I do about Jötunheimr, why would I want to go there?"

"We know that your people worship Asgard," Loki says stiffly, now staring straight ahead.

Incredulous laughter bubbles out of Tony's throat. "Dude, are you for real? That was over a thousand years ago! You know, back when you guys invaded Midgard and Asgard fought you off? And that's a great generalization you made there, like all of Midgard worships them. They're called "Norse gods" for a reason; mostly people in the North were into that, and I repeat, that was a thousand years ago. There are still some fractions, but most people don't really worship them at all."

For a moment, Loki is silent. Then he says, "You realize that those responsible for the invasion were just a fraction of our people? If all of Jotunheim had been involved, Midgard would not have been defended so easily by Asgard."

Impatiently, Tony shakes his head. How would he know that? "Yeah, that's nice, but I don't actually care. Not about Asgard nor who invaded my planet _over a thousand years ago_ , I can't stress it any more, that's so fuckass long ago I literally cannot give a fuck."

"The way you use language has certainly altered a lot," Loki grudgingly says after a moment.

"Well what- whoa! What the hell? Surprise mountain? Where did that come from?" The mountain – it can't be anything else; it's not particularly high but it's a lot of gray stone rising up in front of him that Tony seriously has no idea how he didn't notice before.

The look Loki throws him is scathing. "It has always been there. Your eyes were just too weak to see, apparently." He leads Tony to an entrance that is sort of hidden by a protruding piece of stone and steps inside first, looking back to ensure Tony doesn't slip when he makes the change from ice to stone floor. It's a pretty slim entrance and Tony wonders what the hell is going on – this can't seriously be the entrance to however many people live here, can it? Even if it were just a couple dozen people, this entrance would be way too small. Though it makes a lot of sense from a defense point of view, he has to admit, as does living in a mountain. That makes all sorts of sense actually, what with the hole ice desert thing and all.

Loki produces a glowing ball of light that hovers above their heads, just bright enough so Tony probably won't stumble, and then they weave their way along a winding tunnel. The ceiling is not so low that Tony has to duck, but the two Frost Giants who picked him up certainly would have had to. "So, is this where you live?" Tony asks after a moment. He feels a little like he's in a Lord of the Rings movie and spares a moment to send a silent thanks to his inner self for not having a thing of being buried under lots and lots of stone. Though thinking about it in those terms isn't a good idea even without such a phobia, he realizes in that moment.

"Yes," Loki answers his question blandly. "There are a number of dwellings such as this. Abandoning the cities was the best thing we could have done in several ways."

"How?" Tony asks, half curious and half because the silence is awkward and Loki is being a weird mix of pleasant and non-aggressively hostile and it's confusing. How do other people interact with their soulmates when they meet for the first time? Nobody actually explained the mechanics of that to Tony. Oh, he knows all about how to do the sex part – it was difficult finding someone willing to have sex with someone other than their soulmate until a chance meeting with someone without a name on their wrist, but Tony was very intent on at least trying it out with a human before he branched out with a Frost Giant, something which, looking at Loki's sleek waist and swaying hips, won't be much of a problem really – but the rest of it kind of eludes him. They're soulmates, so they're supposed to be the perfect, only match for each other, but Tony isn't too sure why. He feels _something_ when he looks at Loki, but that might just be excitement and anticipation and nerves.

"For one, there is no better way to paint a target than building a city in the middle of ice and snow," Loki says, stepping past a rock outcrop, body twisting distractingly. That's why Tony at first doesn't notice what's happening, staring at Loki's lower back and okay, his ass as he is, until he steps past that outcrop himself and suddenly finds himself in a wide corridor. There are blue veins running through the almost black stone in a pattern that looks a lot like the raised lines on Loki's skin, glowing faintly, casting them in an eerie light that makes Tony look like an outsider, not quite brightly but illuminating well enough to recognize faces by even at a distance. And there are quite a number of them, walking to and fro, Frost Giants that mostly look like a mix of Loki and the guards who picked Tony up – taller, the horns grown out, and some of them have hair, some don't. They're all blue and all half naked, and looking at them, Tony suddenly realizes that the guards who picked him up must have been seasoned warriors. Their skin was a little lighter, scars littering their bodies, and Tony had ascribed the difference merely to Loki's age – Loki looks softer, not as in weak but as in less hardened, the lines on his skin much more pronounced – but now Tony sees a lot more people looking like Loki does. Skin a darker shade of blue, less damaged, less burly and scowly and hostile. Tony pushes the hood of his borrowed coat down and looks around curiously, noticing that he's being eyed in return just as curiously. Some, but by far not most of these gazes are suspicious, if not hostile. There is that too, though. Not a super great feeling, but it's not like that's a completely new experience to Tony.

"So, is it just me or is it literally me? Because I'm getting some hostile vibes here," Tony jokes, making a point of not stepping up closer to Loki even if he wants to, sort of.

Loki shrugs. "Not many Jötnar are bonded to a Midgardian – it's rare. The last time such a pairing happened was around seventy of your years ago, and he died before they turned of age."

Seventy years ago? That would've been right around the time when World War II entered its hot phase, so Tony isn't surprised. A lot of destined and mated pairs were torn apart by death in that time.

Taking a step further into the corridor, Loki waits for Tony to catch up and walk beside him before he snaps his fingers to call the suitcases along and continues his explanation as they walk. "Nevertheless, there is a procedure; we contract a third party to contact the Midgardian on behalf of their mate and their meeting is negotiated that way. We don't usually have to bother with Asgard. You approaching Odin so early was... surprising, and many took it as a sign that Midgard still worships the Æsir."

"Well, maybe you guys should have approached me first then to prevent Asgard from being involved," Tony points out.

"As I said," Loki says impatiently, "That is usually how such a pairing is handled. We were under the impression that one, you would have neither opportunity nor means to approach an Æsir, seeing as they don't make it a habit to visit Midgard, and two, that considering our history, you would refrain if only out of courtesy."

"First of all, it wasn't even me, it was my parents," Tony replies, getting a little impatient himself. "They thought the rune meant Æsir. It's not like we have any way of knowing the difference, on Midgard. Secondly, we know even less about whatever is going on between Jötunheimr and Asgard. Nor do we care, honestly. We're busy with our own, why would we bother with somebody else's conflicts?"

Scowling, Loki leads Tony around a corner what feels like deeper into the mountain. Now the hall is starting to be littered with openings on either side; some covered, some not, and the quick glances inside Tony can manage as they walk by just reveal people inside, if that, nothing strange or worrying. They still come across a fair number of people; it's not quite crowded but busy enough. Nobody seems to pay Loki any special heed, even though he's the son of their king, something that confuses Tony greatly. Shouldn't they acknowledge somehow that Loki is the crown prince? Instead they at best stare at Tony and offer a brief nod to Loki, if they pay him any attention at all. They don't ignore him per se, they just don't act like he's anyone special. Odin wouldn't have lied about something like that, though, so did Loki get demoted? Was his father fired and somebody else took the throne?

How would Tony feel about the fact that Loki isn't a crown prince after all or anymore at least and now just another normal citizen? He's vain enough that it isn't a great feeling. Tony had been well-known on Midgard and while there probably are some advantages to it, he doesn't cherish the thought of fading into being unknown. Then again, he probably never will be that, what with how there hasn't been a Midgardian mate to a Jötnar in seventy years. Notoriety isn't something Tony enjoys, however. He's had enough of that on Midgard, being mated to a Jotun.

"So, Loki," Tony drawls, aiming for nonchalant and probably not really managing. "Tell me about yourself."

The look Loki sends him is downright suspicious. "Why?"

"I don't know, maybe because we're destined to be together for the rest of our lives?" Tony rolls his eyes. "You know, if the fact that I left my home world behind for you to go somewhere completely unknown isn't good enough for you."

Loki exhales noisily, and then Tony feels a slight pressure on his back like Loki put his hand there, heavy enough to be noticeable even through the thick fur coat. "What do you wish to know?"

What sort of question is that? "Everything, basically. Ranging from personal info to what you people eat and do all day and where we're going and when, if ever, they are going to stop glaring me and realize that I'm so uninvolved in whatever might be going on between Asgard and Jötunheimr, I couldn't care even if I wanted to. This whole thing was like fifty generations ago, _please_."

Suddenly the pressure of Loki's hand isn't in the small of Tony's back, it's around his waist and Loki pulls, pulls him close into his body and suddenly Tony's heart is beating loud and fast again. Their faces are real close all of a sudden, Tony can feel Loki's cool breath on his cheek. It makes him shiver, but not because of the temperature. And did the air get thinner? Does that happen _in_ mountains or just _on_ mountains?

"My name is Loki, son of Laufey," Loki murmurs, and he's standing real close. All of a sudden Tony doesn't appreciate the long sleeves at all; he's worried that if he moves too much the spell keeping them still and close is going to be broken and Loki will pull away again, but his hands are buried in miles of fur and he isn't going to get to touch Loki's skin this way. "You are my mate intended whose name I have born on my skin since the day I was born." Unwittingly, Tony glances at Loki's wrist. Noticing this, Loki turns it so Tony can see his name there; _Anthony Edward Stark_ in a fairly simple font. Yeah, that's Tony. "One day, you shall be my consort if I take the crown of Jötunheimr, and, if you prove worthy, shall bear the scepter. Some people will question you because you are Midgardian until you have proven yourself; Midgard's connection to Asgard is merely a further point against you. I will tolerate no open disrespect, though, so you won't have to worry."

It takes Tony a moment or two to catch his breath, partly because of Loki's close proximity and partly because of the first half of what he said. The second half of his little speech helps him collect himself quickly enough, though. His name is a ring around Loki's wrist, and his mate severely underestimates him because he and his entire race, really, are biased against Asgard especially but Midgardians as well. Tony licks his lips and leans closer, so his lips almost touch Loki's cheek. If he licked them now he would taste Loki's skin, a thought that sends pleasant shivers down his back. " _You_ don't have to worry. I'll show them, show _you_ what I am made of. Proving myself worthy? By the time I'm done with you you'll be thanking the stars that you got me."

He pulls away and Loki is staring at him, eyes dark, pupils dilated. Thrills of excitement are rippling though Tony's body, but what he likes even more is the spark of almost reluctant respect in Loki's eyes. Even if Tony won't be able to follow through (and he will be, he knows this already, knows it like he knows that gravity exists), Loki now knows that Tony won't tolerate _him_ being disrespectful either. Loki's smirk is cocky though, teeth bright as he bares them. "I am really curious how you plan to achieve that."

"You'll just have to wait and see." Tony smiles and ducks in to flick the tip of his tongue over Loki's icy lower lip, smirking at Loki's gobsmacked expression. "Coming? You know, to wherever we're heading."

Blinking and with his cheeks darkening, Loki glances backwards to Tony's suitcase, hanging somewhat alist in the air. At his look they straighten like naughty schoolchildren caught in the middle of a prank, and then Loki steps up to Tony again, a strange, intense expression on his face. "We are to meet my mother. You shall be formally introduced." He clears his throat and guides Tony down the corridor, a hand in the small of Tony's back, and they both walk silently, hearts beating fast in their chests. Tony doesn't know if it's the almost-confrontation or Loki's proximity or the teasing, but if he's going to be meeting the parents he doesn't want to be unsettled at all, so he focuses on his surroundings instead of Loki in the hope that it will calm him down.

The walls are riddled with veins of blue light, and maybe Tony is just imagining things but it's brighter now than it was when they first got to a lit area. He'd love to know what this stuff is that it emits light without needing to absorb it first.

It's strange because they're underground and Tony would have expected it, but he doesn't feel claustrophobic at all. The halls are wide but, much more significantly, high; most of the Frost Giants Tony comes across are about the size and height of the two guards who came to pick him up, except the ones who aren't. The more of them he sees, though, the more obvious it becomes that it's the age that makes a difference, not actual difference. An important part in this realization are the horns: the bigger and longer they are, the taller and fully grown the Jötnar. Loki is obviously still pretty young and will most probably one day be as big and tall as these guys are.

That's another thing Tony notices; there are only guys. And it's pretty obviously guys because an overwhelming percentage of them walk around like Loki, hot pants of various styles (some of them look like skirts but Tony doesn't want to stare so he can't say for sure), shoes or boots of differing length and nothing else. "You're pretty okay in these temperatures, aren't you?" Tony eventually asks, gesturing broadly when Loki sends him a questioning look. "I mean seriously, you're all walking around half-naked."

"How would we feel our world if we closed ourselves off from it?" Loki poses a rhetorical question. "Asgard claims there is no life in this realm, but that's merely because their senses are too dulled by their indulgences and coddling to realize how wrong they are. Besides, as uncomfortable as the temperature may be for you, it is not for us. Currently it is, in fact, rather warm." He shrugs like he's completely unconcerned by that.

Mouth firming, Tony shakes his head once. "How the hell are we supposed to work out if I'll freeze to death in temperatures you're happy with and you probably get a heat stroke in a temperature comfortable to me?" It's a honest concern too; he severely underestimated this. But Loki's lips were icy cold under his tongue and even if they had sex under the coat or something Tony would probably get frostbite on his balls if he kept them in contact with Loki's skin for too much. Not to mention that being inside the cloak with Tony would probably be like a sauna for Loki. It's a serious problem.

Loki doesn't seem to think so, though, clearly; he grins, teeth gleaming. "You need not worry. It won't be a concern." Upon Tony's frustrated scowl he grins, leans in close and teases, "You'll just have to wait and see," before darting in and stealing a kiss from Tony. Looking very self-satisfied with the move, he then pulls back and goes back to herding a stunned Tony down the corridor.

Slowly, Tony gets over his surprise and a grin starts to spread on his face. He and Loki might get somewhere, after all; there's more to him than Tony had initially thought.

They don't talk anymore as they walk, and soon afterwards Loki leads Tony into a wide hall, its high ceiling supported by an array of pillars. The dark gray stone is veined by the same blue, glowing lines imbedded in the walls and ceiling of the corridors, but here they look more artistic, more curved, some shaped almost like trees whose branches are intricately connected. They rank up to the ceiling and across it, the little clusters where they cross and twine around each other making it look almost like the night sky sprinkled with stars. It's very pretty, and Tony is mostly sure now that the lines must be artificial. It only makes him more curious about them.

There are other things requiring his attention, though; namely, Loki's parents (or mother, at least). There isn't a throne in the room, nothing like that, but there are a lot of people. None of them stick out – there is no crown, they aren't visibly mobbing one of them or giving someone space like one would think they would their king. But Loki hooks his hand in Tony's arm and suddenly pulls him along with him purposefully, walking straight to a cluster of Jötnar by one of the pillars. They notice them coming and gesture towards him, and one of them breaks apart from the group to walk towards them, smiling a little. "Mother," Loki says, voice warm, and what?

The guy looks like... a guy. Nothing to indicate that he isn't a he, in any case, and Tony is starting to realize that he really should have asked Loki about the curious lack of women before now.

"Loki," Loki's... mother? says, voice too low to sound feminine. She(? seriously this is really disorienting) reaches out and cups Loki's shoulders, tilting her head towards his. Loki returns the gesture and they touch their foreheads in a way that looks strangely intimate, even though they're literally just touching their foreheads together. Granted, their eyes are closed and they're both still so it looks a lot like a hug, but their bodies are at least a foot apart and not touching anywhere but their hands, shoulders and foreheads.

They let go and she smiles at Loki before focusing on Tony. "Mother," Loki says, stepping aside a little to let Tony step forwards, "This is my intended, Anthony Edward Stark."

"Tony," Tony blurts. "Uh, I prefer Tony."

"We had been wondering," Loki's mother smirks. "Having so many, long names must be cumbersome in everyday life, yes? Though I hear that Midgardians are so plentiful that several names are required for organizational reasons."

"That's right," Tony nods. "Stark is my family name, the first is my name, and the middle name is my grandfather's given name." He shrugs. "People usually call each other by either their first or last name, depending how familiar they are with each other, or a nickname really, like me. I prefer Tony."

"I am Laufey," Loki's mother says, "King of Jötunheimr." And okay, now Tony has completely lost the plot. Thankfully he doesn't get more of an opportunity to make a faux pas because Laufey continues, slightly regretful, "There is much to do for keskikesä still, and you will be busy afterwards of course, but there is plenty time to get to know each other afterwards."

Tony is by this point just completely confused; Loki called him/her mother but he/she introduced herself as king. He has absolutely no idea how to talk to her/him, so he just nods, a little dazed. "Yeah, sure."

"We shall go select rooms for Tony now," Loki says seriously.

Laufey nods. "Choose somewhere near ydin, you can always change your mind later if you are not comfortable."

Nodding obediently, Loki hooks his hand in Tony's elbow again. "Yes, mother." Tony waves feebly as Loki leads him out of the hall and manfully holds his silence as they walk further down the corridor, and then take a turn somewhere, and another. If there is one thing knows for sure is going to happen in his future, it's that he's going to get lost here.

When he's sure that they're completely out of hearing range of the huge hall and furthermore in a smaller, less busy corridor, Tony can't keep his mouth shut a moment longer. "Okay, explain something to me. You said that was your mother, but uh no insult intended or whatever, but she did not look like a woman and she also said she's the king of this place. I'm not even sure what the question is because I'm basically just one huge question mark on the whole topic right now."

Loki blinks in confusion, then laughs suddenly. "Of course! I forgot. Midgard is the same as Asgard in this aspect, is it not? About a third of your population is anatomically primed to bear children and the males that make up the rest of society both coddle and degrade them?"

"Now wait just a moment," Tony says feebly, and how did he end up in this conversation? Jesus. He severely underestimated just how alien Loki and the Jötnar might end up being, but Loki talks as if they have no women or men at all, or as if everyone can get pregnant here. Maybe both is even the case, talk about mind-boggling. "It's about half, and we're trying to fix the whole sexism thing, okay?"

"Sexism," Loki repeats thoughtful. "Discrimination based on one's sex. I have heard about this." He smiles suddenly. "Asgard and Midgard are the only realms with such clear definitions, as it were. Jötunheimr, Ālfheimr, Svartálfaheimr, Vanaheimr, Niflheimr and Muspelheimr and their respective native people are less rigid. On Jötunheimr, there is no anatomical difference at all; any distinction is at most a matter of choice." At Tony's expression, he laughs, a surprisingly pleasant sound that pulls Tony from his confusion a little. "Worry not, such things matter little. I see why you were confused, though; this language forces one to make distinctions based on sex. My mother is my mother because she bore me, and is also king of Jötunheimr because that is his elected position. A queen, I understand, would be lower in station were she to marry, correct?"

Tony nods absently. "Yeah, I think so. What do you mean, elected? You- your kings are elected?"

"Of course they are. Asgard and several other realms pass on their leadership and other important positions by inheritance, but it seems to me a very dangerous gamble. What if one of the sons or daughters to inherit a position were not suitable? Or worse, suitable but led by their own agenda?" Loki shakes his head. "On Jötunheimr, we prefer to elect those intended to guide or represent us. How is a king produced on Midgard? What do your kings do?"

"That's a smart system actually, lots of countries work like that on Midgard," Tony says. At first it had seemed really strange to him, but after a moment's thought, it's actually not all that strange at all. It's a democracy, is what it is, and Tony feels a little less off-balance now. "They're inherited too though. And, king things I guess? Like you said, represent their country. I don't really know, where I'm from we've never had a king."

"You haven't?" Loki sounds astonished. "Who leads you, then?"

"Our president. He's elected, like you said, and he does things like diplomacy and try to make the government work out and stuff." Tony never realized how little he actually knows until Loki started asking questions. This is embarrassing.

"President is a different word for king, then," Loki concludes. "For that is what my mother does." He stops walking, his strong grip on Tony's arm ensuring that he halts mid-step as well.

"...what?" Tony says after a moment. They're standing in front of a sort of shaft, or maybe small room without floor is a better description. It's just there all of a sudden, the randomness a welcome distraction from the confusing discussion of politics and the question where the difference between king and president really is, and maybe if president isn't a better word to describe Laufey's position, from all Tony knows of it.

One eyebrow raised at him, Loki makes a gesture towards the bottomless room. Tony has a moment to wonder whether this is where he's going to get killed and everything else has been a lie, and then his suitcases float past him and into the room, where they, as sudden as if their strings had been cut, drop into the darkness where the floor should be.

"Hey!" Tony exclaims, both scared and pissed; he might have prepared his suitcases, but they and the things inside are not going to survive a drop high enough that he still hasn't heard an impact.

"Not to worry," Loki says, wraps both arms tightly around Tony and pulls him along as he throws himself into the room and lets them drop after the suitcases.

If Tony shrieks, it's a manly sound full of righteous outrage, not of sheer terror, because he doesn't honestly think this is some mad murder-suicide thing or whatever. Loki is laughing, the air whistles in Tony's ears and after the first two (or five) seconds of pure shock and terror, he calms down a little. As in, he probably isn't going to pee himself, and he becomes strangely accepting of the fact that either they're plunging towards their deaths, or some magic is going to happen and they're going to survive because this is the Jötnar version of the elevator or something.

What Tony most definitely does not do is cling to Loki and yell obscenities while Loki laughs in his ear, delighted and elated, as they fall through a darkness that isn't as pitch black as Tony had thought. The shaft is somewhat illuminated, but Tony is not going to turn around and look down to check just how much so and whether he can see the ground. This is one instance where ignorance is bliss, most definitely.

As quick as it began it stops again. One moment Tony is wondering whether they're slowing down, and the next they have most definitely stopped and are hovering in the air. His throat is hoarse, his heart is beating as quickly as a mouse's, and he has his arms and legs wrapped tightly around Loki, face buried in his neck.

He scrambles to let go of Loki and somehow rolls off the air pillow they landed on, dropping to the floor with a dull thud that hurts more than the whole plunging to his death thing did. Which didn't hurt at all, so it's not much in the grand scheme of things, but still. "You-!"

Loki smiles beatifically and much more elegantly slides off whatever invisible thing stopped their free fall, landing easily on his feet. "I was told Midgard has elevators too."

"Yeah but they don't literally elevate- you did that on purpose!" Tony accuses, using the wall as support to get upright. His shaky legs will barely hold him, and after a moment of trying to calm his breathing down he realizes he's clutching his pearls like a Southern belle and lets go, settling both hands firmly on the wall. "I really, really hate you right now," he grinds out, blinking up at the ceiling and breathing.

"It was really not that bad," Loki tries, but nope, no, not gonna happen. Tony knows a thing or two about hazing the newcomer but this was _not_ funny.

Stepping a little closer until he's hovering at the edge of Tony's field of vision, Loki tries again. "You're going to be happy we're down here." When Tony doesn't react he continues, "This is the warmest level available to us. The further we walk along this corridor there, the warmer it gets. This is where you may pick your rooms, wherever you prefer."

Now that Loki mentions, Tony does notice that it's not as freezingly cold here. It had been warmer in the mountain than it had been outside, of course, for the lack of wind and not being completely exposed if nothing else, but not significantly, at least not to Tony. Here, though? It certainly is warmer.

Letting out a breath, Tony lowers his gaze and looks around a little. His suitcases are sitting, undamaged, neatly side by side on the floor of he fucking elevator-free elevator shaft they all just fell down, and there is one single corridor leading away from it. Tony has no idea if it's further into the mountain or away from it, he's completely lost his orientation already. The same veins as upstairs are running through the stone, but paying attention, Tony notices that the color is different, leaning more towards purple than the blue of upstairs. Combined with the fact that the corridor is completely devoid of people excepting them, it gives this area a somewhat eerie feeling. "Where are we?"

"This is the juuri level," Loki explains as if Tony would gain any sort of insight from that.

Noticing that Tony, in fact, doesn't, he sighs and deigns to actually explain. "Our dwellings are carved into mountains or into the ground. They are not organized like houses with their neat structures and clear levels; someone who wishes to carve their own home may do so, after obtaining permission of course. There are five levels that are for the public, though – the level we arrived at was the sydän, the main level. In between there are two more levels, and then there is this level, the juuri level. You will pick rooms here in a temperature comfortable to you, and there you will stay until we have carved our own dwelling and enchanted it so we both may be comfortable in its climate."

That makes Tony pay proper attention. "We can do that? Share rooms, I mean? I thought if one of us is comfortable, the other one is going to be uncomfortable by default."

"Currently," Loki says, clearly seeing his chance and leaning in a little further. At least he doesn't look amused anymore, even if he is by far not as apologetic as Tony would like. For a moment there he genuinely thought he was dying, that Loki was killing him. It was _not_ funny. "After our binding, we have three of your years during which we are supposed to grow comfortable with each other, and to carve our own home, if we wish to. In our case, because of the different requirements in environmental circumstances, it is less of an option; there are no caves available suitable to our relatively unique blend of needs so unless we wish to live separately, we will have to carve our own quarters."

Detecting a question there, Tony looks at Loki for a long moment. "I guess we do," he eventually grants, and Loki smiles. There are probably all sorts of connotations to carving your own cave together; Tony has absolutely no cultural context but the implications of making your own home and compromising and working together are pretty obvious. And okay, right now Tony isn't sure if Loki is a huge dick or actually sort of cute in a cheeky way, but either way he makes Tony's heartbeat speed up and if Loki turns out to be a jerk, well. Tony probably is something of a jerk too and he can train Loki.

"What happens if we don't do it in the three years? And why do you say it like that, my years? I mean- obviously time passes differently here, different planet and sun and all that. How do you measure time? How old are you?"

Raising one eyebrow, Loki answers the question in chronological order. "Nothing, but afterwards we will be too busy for some time to focus much time and effort on extensive private matters such as this – which is why it's highly recommended not to have children this early. After the three years, we will have another ceremony that will formally accept us into adulthood as a bonded pair, and after that we will contribute to society as our main occupation for a while. Time is measured differently here, yes. There are two seasons per year, the light one where the sun is in the sky, and the dark one where it is not. We're at the middle of the dark season right now, thus, the mid-season festival. Currently, I'm a little older than eight years old."

Face distorting into a distasteful grimace, Tony gapes and squints at Loki. "Eight? You're _eight years old_? Oh fuck, this puts a wholly new spin on paedophilia. Shit, I knew there was a reason they don't let soulmates meet until they've both made it to fifteen at least, if not eighteen."

Loki frowns his disapproval at him. "You are not eighteen. You are fifteen. With the way you count time, I would be fifteen too; you know this. I was born shortly after you."

Okay, yeah. Tony knows that. There are a few pictures of him without a name on his wrist, and a whole lot more with Loki's rune on him that appeared about two weeks after Tony was born. The photos peter out again from five years on and older, after his parents found out just who the rune was referring to, but until then, there are a lot of photos. "Yeah, okay. Just, wow. For a second there... phew. I'm really glad we were born so close together."

Loki hums in agreement. "Some of our people have to wait many years for a name to appear on their skin, especially if their intended is from another realm, even more so if they are mortal. I am very lucky."

They look at each other. Tony has to swallow, heart beating fast in his chest, and he feels suddenly breathless with the intensity of Loki's gaze. This is a moment, they're having a moment, right?

Oh god, they're definitely having a moment, Loki is leaning in a little, looking a little dazed, gaze focused on Tony's lips. Tony licks them and can watch Loki's pupils dilate, he can see it, right there, and he can't, he just can't resist any longer, he can't and he doesn't know why he should anyway.

He breaches the last bit of separating space between them and presses his lips to Loki's. For a moment they're freezing, startlingly so because right, Tony forgot about that, but then they warm up and Tony's eyes flutter shut as Loki's mouth opens under him, opens right up as Loki leans into him, welcomes him.

At first Loki still feels literally cool, though not as cold as in the initial moment of contact, but as their lips move against each other he starts to warm up, like Tony is sharing his warmth and that's a heady thought, but it isn't what makes Tony dizzy. That's probably a combination of everything; the feel of Loki's silky lips, the way he cups the side of Tony's head and tilts it the way he wants it, a better angle to- holy god, Loki's _tongue_ is in his mouth, and Tony has kissed other people but nothing compares to this. Yeah, Tony can definitely spend the rest of his life kissing Loki.

Loki's taste – foreign, not like anything Tony is familiar with or used to, but heady, pleasant – floods his mouth and Tony makes a noise low in his throat, pushes into Loki's touch and sucks his tongue deeper inside. Loki makes a noise as well, throaty and raw, and his other hand is in Tony's hair, pulling a little as Loki suddenly pushes his whole body into Tony's, making him stumble backwards a little and bump into the wall. It doesn't hurt or anything but it's enough to knock them off a little, makes Tony open his eyes, and what he sees makes him blink. It's Loki, but not. His face is the same, his hair is the same, but his colors are all off – human, Tony realizes, Loki looks human, skin pink, cheeks flushed, lips red and eyes dark. Tony's hand somehow found its way to Loki's face, he doesn't even know when or how that happened but it must have been during the kissing, and Tony wants to go back to that, but this is a little weird. "What happened to your face?"

Loki blinks, the dazed look leaving his eyes a little and that's such a shame, Tony plans right then and there to make it come back as soon as possible. "I- in my true form, it would not be wise for us to touch, for either of us."

Blinking as well, Tony leans back a little to get a better look. Loki's eyes are green now, an almost poisonous-looking depth to the color and it's nice, it's hot, but it's a little weird. "Wait," Tony says, trying to focus on the facts and not let his disappointment show. "Does that mean you'll always have to do this? What is this even? Not that you look bad or anything," he hastens to add, because he's detecting that he's just putting his foot in his mouth. "I'm just, I mean, I was fond of how you looked before?" Actually Tony had been hoping to soon get the opportunity to lick Loki's skin, follow the lines on his skin with his tongue. And when they had first kissed he hadn't gotten the feeling that his tongue was going to get stuck on Loki like on a freezing metal pole, he hadn't been that cold.

"That's good, because that is my true form," Loki says, smiling, and Tony gets the feeling that he just did something right. He has no idea what but Loki is smiling at him very sweetly, and his hands are still cupping Tony's face, thumbs rubbing over his cheeks. "Do not worry, I will learn. I am a gifted shapeshifter." With those mysterious words he steps away, but he captures Tony's hand in his before the sleeve of the coat can slide down to cover it again, twines their fingers.

Tony is helpless to repress his smile, even if he probably looks pretty silly right now. "I have no idea what that means." He watches as the pink bleeds out of Loki's face again, making way for his proper blue color, eyes turning from green to red from one blink to the next, and feels the coolness return to Loki's hand, still caught up in his grip.

"What I just did," Loki says, still smiling a little, but not brightly enough to make Tony embarrassed with how it makes him feel, "I am gifted with magic, but I am extraordinary at shapeshifting. Changing my shape – not merely my appearance, my whole shape. There are stories of me doing it before I had even turned a year old."

"So you just turned yourself human?" Magic, okay. Tony decides that he will just accept that as an answer for now. If he just tries to think about the theory, the physics behind it (if there are physics behind it; his father claims that it's impossible that there aren't, but Tony is thinking, magic might just be a whole new category – literally changing one's physical form just by the power of will doesn't sound very scientific at all) he'll probably go crazy. A job for a lifetime, really, so definitely something to think about another day.

"Essentially, yes." Lifting his shoulders nonchalantly, Loki pulls at Tony's arm a little. "Come, we will go where it's warmer. I'm correct in the assumption that this is too cold still for you, for living quarters?"

Tony licks his lips, shivering a little when he tastes Loki on them. "Yeah."

"I thought so. It felt cold to me, just now." Fingers still entwined, he makes a gesture towards the suitcase, who obediently lift off and float along as Loki leads Tony down the corridor. "Say when you start to- though I might as well." He changes colors – shape, whatever – again, going back to human. It mostly looks like someone is pouring a different set of colors over him, really, except for how his horns shrink and vanish. "I did not realize how cold it truly feels to a human until just now."

That arouses a question. Tony tilts his head. "You said something like that before, but if you can change into a human, didn't you notice before?"

"I have never changed into male human before – that's what I'm doing right now, changing my form into what I would look like, had I been born human. I can change into other people as well, specific or non-specific, but this is me. Male human version of me, in any case."

That's really interesting – human version of Loki. It makes Tony feel a little less estranged when Loki looks like this. "So you could change something else too? I don't know, make your hair red or something?"

Loki looks at him and raises one eyebrow. "Why, do you have a special person in mind you wish for me to look like?"

Tony grimaces. "No. Seriously? No. ...seriously? Why would you even- just, no." Just the thought is severely off-putting. Yeah, Tony has done stuff with that girl with the empty wrist, but now that he has met Loki he feels absolutely no need to do it ever again. Logically he still understands why he did it, but emotionally he doesn't get it at all anymore. Especially not after that kiss.

"That was a good answer," Loki says, and just.

Tony shakes his head. "Seriously, don't ask something like that again. Don't fish. I don't like it. What, would you want me to look like somebody else if I could?"

"No." Loki's quick answer and grimace are telling, and it makes Tony feel a little better about the fact that he asked a question like that. It's nice to get some validation that Loki isn't unhappy right now with who he ended up with, but still, that was an unacceptable question.

With an apologetic look thrown Tony's way, Loki squeezes his hand. "Do you feel it getting warmer?"

Tony decides to allow the change in topic – he doesn't even know why Loki's question buggered him so much. "Yeah." He does indeed; not just as he breathes in and against his skin, but under the coat he's starting to get uncomfortable. It's warm and fluffy and basically the best thing ever, that's still Tony's opinion, but it's starting to be a little too much in these temperatures. "What is this made of, anyway?"

"An animal called pörssikeinottelija," Loki says.

"...right." Tony clears his throat. "So, does everyone here speak English? Or do I have to learn this language? Because I hate to be pessimistic but I don't foresee that going easily."

Loki snorts. "I actually do speak English, but most everybody else here speaks Allspeak – or at least those people you will understand and who will understand you do. But you need not worry about that; my mother will formally gift it to you after our binding. You don't need it yet, but after the hunt there will be a feast that will be attended by many guests, not all of whom speak Allspeak. So when she gives it to you, you should drink it."

"Okay." Tony frowns. "So Allspeak is something to drink?" A language you can drink. Well. Magic. So much for there being physics underneath it all.

"It's... something of a reunion of a spell ingested via a liquid it is bound to and a language, I suppose. It means that whomever you speak to, they hear you in their native tongue." Loki stops walking and looks at Tony. "Would you like to take the fur off? You look a little flushed."

Good point actually; Tony is actually getting too warm now. He makes no move to take the coat off himself though, instead lets Loki step up close and worm his hands underneath, deftly undoing the number of clasps and pushing it off Tony's shoulders, catching it before it falls to the floor. He doesn't step away from Tony, instead lets his eyes slowly wander down Tony's body, lingering a little at the rune on his wrist before continuing. "You are covered so much, and still it's not sufficient protection against the cold outside."

"...I was about to say something about how at least I'm not half-naked, but I can literally see no disadvantages at all to your lack of clothes." Mouth curling up into a smirk, Tony makes no effort to hide his leer as he returns the favor, looking up and down Loki's body the same way Loki had looked at him.

Loki smirks as well. "Are you comfortable here?"

Caught off-guard by the question, Tony blinks. "I guess? I mean your mom was nice I guess and you're hot- oh, wait, you mean in this temperature." Tony face-palms a little. "Right." It's much warmer than before, but without the fur goosebumps are breaking out along his arms again. "A little warmer would be better. Why is it getting warmer anyway? Is this a volcano?"

"Yes." Loki nods, satisfied with Tony making the leap, if his almost proud smile is anything to go by. "Jötunheimr used to be much warmer, similar to Midgard, if still generally cooler. But roughly a millennium and a half ago the climate started to change – that's why our people initially tried to expand. We had tribes that had adapted to the cooler areas of this realm, but just as many, if not more of our people had not. Leaving was the only way for them to survive."

Tony blinks. "Wait, is that why you tried to invade Midgard?"

Loki shrugs. "We did not see it as an invasion initially. You Midgardians are strange about land, about owning it, like such a thing is either fair, reasonable or possible. But yes. Those who tried to settle on Midgard did not wish to leave, that's why the war happened."

That's pretty interesting, and very different from the "Jötnar are evil and greedy and tried to invade poor innocent Midgard" point of view he and the rest of Midgard accepted at face value. Sure, that doesn't make it right, but again, it was over a thousand years ago and Tony doesn't really care much. "What happened afterwards? When Asgard sent them back here? I mean the climate didn't really improve as far as I can tell. Did they adapt?"

"Some of them." Shrugging again, Loki captures Tony's hand again and tugs him down the corridor, further into the warmth. "Some left for other realms. Most died out. These days tribes like this one, more adaptable ones, are the only ones left. Though we do not really live in tribes anymore either way."

Tony hums thoughtfully. So he supposes some kind of ice age is happening here – he hasn't really had a lot of interest in climatology so he doesn't know how this sort of thing comes about, but it sounds a little tragic. "Magic couldn't help either, I suppose. Obviously."

"Magic requires energy," Loki explains. "It was a temporal solution, if anything. Environmental magic especially. Just heating a house, a room, in the temperatures even as today, when it's warm out barring the wind, requires a lot of energy. Too much to maintain for an extended period of time even if every person with magical abilities were to join the effort."

"Thus, the mountain? Volcano." Tony gestures around. "Right?"

"Partially," Loki nods. "These days, the easiest access to natural heat in this realm is going deep. We are fortunate this volcano is still active in a way. We would not need it, but for instances such as this, it's something of a blessing." He tugs on Tony's hand. "Right now this area of the city is still empty, but come tomorrow others will come to stay for keskikesä."

Wait. "Tomorrow?" Tony frowns. "This festival isn't tomorrow though, is it?"

"It is. Guests will come, and at noon the hunt will be hailed; anyone who wishes may join, though as I said, you and I both will participate as part of our binding ceremony. Who by evening returns with the greatest catch wins, but you need not worry about that." He glances at Tony and smirks. "You promised you will surprise me, though, so maybe you will have to worry about that after all."

"Not worried." Tony smiles blithely. "Not worried at all. Your mind will be blown. And something else about you might as well."

He waits for one second, smile not wavering, two seconds... Loki freezes mid-step, head whipping around to stare at Tony, cheeks flushing fetchingly. Widening his smile, Tony tilts his head a little. Yeah, you heard right. That's exactly what Tony meant.

Eyes narrowing, Loki bites his lower lip. Then he's suddenly there, pulling Tony in at his hand and with his other tilting his face up in the same smooth move, leaning in and pressing his lips to Tony's. Half-surprised, half-instinctive Tony opens his mouth and Loki uses the opportunity to thrust his tongue into his mouth. It's a quick kiss, more of a statement than anything else, but it still steals Tony's breath; the quick burst of Loki's taste in his mouth, the feeling of his silken tongue against Tony's, his soft lips. Then Loki pulls back and murmurs, voice low and rough, "If you blow my mind during the hunt, I will blow yours afterwards."

Tony swallows noisily. "Uh, yeah. So, that's definitely going to happen."

Loki smiles. "I look forwards to it." He goes back to leading Tony down the hallway and damn. Okay. Tony needs three tries to focus on the temperature again, right, the actual temperature, that's what he has to pay attention to. He needs to find a comfortable environment. To have a room in. Where he'll have sex with Loki because yeah, that's going to happen.

Fuck. Uh. So a change in topic is definitely required now. "Why..." he has to clear his throat before being able to speak properly. "Why do the light things look different here? More purple than blue."

"They transmit light from the core, ydin, which is also the source of heat we're walking towards," Loki explains, voice a little hoarse as well. "They also transmit heat, so the closer to the source we come, the more towards red the color turns. Though I don't believe you will survive for long in the heat of those temperatures, and certainly not the orange and yellow that follow after. Our ally, Muspelheimr, sent its sorcerers and workers to inlay this netting for us." He brushes his fingers across the wall. Tony follows his example and touches the walls as well, the lines, and finds to his surprise that he doesn't feel a physical difference between stone and the veins. Maybe they're a bit warmer, the stone around them, but Tony isn't sure he really feels that or if he's just imagining it because he knows now that they transmit heat.

"What are they?"

Loki glances at him, a little amused. "Magic. It feeds off ydin – the volcano's core, both the netting and what it does."

"Yeah, that'd work out, since it literally transmits energy," Tony muses. "So could I tap into this network or would that be dangerous? Can the netting crash? Stop working?"

"No." Loki raises one eyebrow. "It actually is possible to draw energy from the netting, but it's not suggested, because as you can imagine unbalancing the netting – or rather, the ydin – is not a desirable outcome. Most people have neither need nor skills to do it either way, though. Why do you wish to? What for?"

Well, Loki clearly knows nothing about modern life on Midgard. "You know what electricity is?"

With a thoughtful frown, Loki tilts his head. "I suppose that might be possible, but the energy that can be drawn from the netting would have to be transformed first. What do you need it for?"

"Stuff." Tony shrugs. "You know that on Midgard, we do pretty much everything with electricity? And okay you have no internet here, but that won't be the case much longer, now that I'm here." Loki's expression clearly conveys that he has no idea what Tony is talking about; he raises one eyebrow. "You know what computers are?"

"Vaguely," Loki shrugs. "Things you use to store and access information?"

"...that's pretty succinct, actually." Wow. Tony couldn't have put it better himself. "Yeah, basically. In any case, I'm a mechanic." A grin steals its way onto Tony's face; he can't really suppress it. "You'll know exactly what I mean soon."

Loki's face is doubtful, but he doesn't voice his thoughts, which is good because Tony doesn't want to have an argument but he also doesn't want to spoil the surprise. "In any case, you should probably talk to Skulveig. He is the fire demon who was responsible for the inlay of the netting, and he might be there for the festival tomorrow. I wish to introduce you to his son, Hrinmeer, anyway."

And more names Tony is never going to be able to pronounce. He supposes he's gotten lucky with Loki and Laufey. "Are you friends?"

"Not as such," is the confusing reply. "Hrinmeer is half Fire Demon, half Light Elf; his mother is Aeltri of Ālfheimr. We are allied with both these realms. More importantly, Hrinmeer is bonded to a mortal, and I thought you would like to speak to her. They will come most definitely tomorrow as I asked them to; if Skulveig won't, Hrinmeer can convey an invitation from us to him so you may ask him your questions."

Tony blinks, oddly touched. That's... really sweet, actually. Not only that Loki is willing to actually ask this netting architect guy to come here especially just for Tony, but that he specifically asked Hrinmeer and his Midgardian wife to come tomorrow just so Tony can talk to her. And he did this before he even met Tony. Flushing a little, Tony squeezes Loki's hand. "That's really sweet of you. Thank you."

Loki smiles at him, a shy little curl to the corners of his mouth, before he looks away quickly and clears his throat. "Is this temperature comfortable for you? I will let you keep my birthfur as a loan until the one I hunt for you tomorrow is ready to be worn, but you should be comfortable anyway."

Of course Tony completely forgot to pay attention to that, and now he's surprised to find that he's actually... yeah, he's comfortable. "No, this is good. Great, actually." No goosebumps, no shivering, no breath turning visible; he's good here.

Satisfied, Loki nods. "Wonderful." He guides Tony to the nearest opening in the wall, stepping into the room behind, letting the suitcases levitate past him and set down on the floor in the middle of the room. It's relatively small, about a six foot distance from the tip of he oval shape to the entrance, and two more openings spark from this entryway into other rooms. "These are relatively small quarters," Loki explains. "They are only temporary, until we have found or made our own dwelling, should we decide to do that. But you can always pick different rooms when these are not to your taste; everything that is not occupied is free to be moved into."

That's really liberal, sort of hippie but Tony finds he doesn't disapprove at all. It seems to be a great system – and inevitable, really, when an entire village, city, whatever, lives inside a mountain. Once rooms have been carved out, they're there, if somebody lives in them or not. "Did there use to live more people here? Because it's so empty, I mean."

"No." Loki shrugs carelessly. "Our population is fluctuating, yes, but not greatly. There is so much space because for one, a Jötnar cannot live so close to ydin because it's too warm, and secondly with this being the king's residence, this dwelling gets the most visitors. The annual get-together is held here as well."

As Tony listens to Loki's reply, he steps past Loki into the room to the right, finding it mostly oval shaped again, at least twice as big as the entrance. To Tony's surprise, the room is actually furnished a little; there is a table and chairs and shelves carved into the walls. "Do all rooms have table and chairs?"

Loki pokes his head into the room, stepping back when Tony walks past him to check the other room out. "No. They come equipped with whatever who lived here before left behind. Just let me know what you need and I will obtain it for you."

Tony hums thoughtfully. The other room is smaller, roughly oval-shaped again but completely bare excepting a raised area of stone towards the tip of the oval; space for a bed, Tony assumes. "I pretty much need everything. Also, are there bathrooms?" No toilet. That sort of sucks, though Tony has to grant that it would be too much work to carve access to whatever sewage system there is every time somebody digs a room.

"Yes. I will show you in a moment. You need bedding, a chest for your possessions I assume, what else?"

In the face of how accommodating Loki is, Tony feels embarrassed for acting like a brat when he was packing his things. "Well. Basically. Clothes. Also food? How does that happen here?" Something to drink would be nice too.

Loki blinks, a puzzled frown pulling his eyebrows together. "Clothes?" He reaches out to brush his fingers across Tony's t-shirt. "I suppose this cloth is not really sufficient. The festival starting tomorrow involves something of a market as well, we will look for proper clothing for you then."

Yeah, Tony is probably going to just let him keep thinking that all Tony has is more t-shirts, which really are insufficient here. "Cool. Thanks. ...so, bathroom? Food?"

So Loki leads Tony down the corridor – it's thankfully only one-way here so Tony won't have to worry about getting lost – halfway back the way they came until they get to a yawning opening in the wall that Tony, if he even noticed it, completely ignored the first time around. He might have been distracted by Loki, admittedly.

Inside is an entryway like the one to Tony's new rooms, though much bigger and with shelves carved into the wall where, as Loki indicates, people may leave their clothes; Loki stores the fur coat there. He points towards a different opening where the toilets are, then leads Tony up a set of stairs at the opposite end from the entrance. There aren't many stairs, maybe one flight's worth, and as they walk up Tony notices the normally cool smell of the caves changing to something richer, wetter. Then the staircase opens into a wide room filled with billowing fog wafting up from a huge pool of water, clearer than anything Tony has ever seen not coming from a tap. Wide stairs are carved into the stone, leading down into the water to the bottom of the pool, which Tony estimates is probably big enough for a fully-grown Jötnar to be comfortably submerged. Tony can't resist; he has to step forwards and dip his hand into the water. He's careful at first – it looks pretty hot, what with the steam, and it is warm, but not much warmer than a bath would be. Of course with the generally cool temperature of the air and stone, it wouldn't be.

Still, hot water. Wow. Tony had not expected that.

"It comes from deeper into the mountain," Loki explains when Tony asks. Clearly, the deeper into the mountain one goes – as long as one doesn't go up while going deeper – the warmer everything gets. That's pretty cool and Tony certainly hadn't expected it.

He glances at the water, then at Loki, hovering half-naked and human-skinned at the entryway. "You're fine with these temperatures now, right? You're really human?"

Loki tilts his head. "Yes."

"So we can totally take a swim right now?" To hide the smirk trying to sneak onto his face Tony bites his lower lip and blinks up at Loki, trying probably not very successfully for innocent.

Raising both eyebrows, Loki looks at the water, then at Tony, then back again. Clearly some more persuasion is in order; rising to his feet, Tony pulls his t-shirt up and over his head and throws it to the floor. Hands settling on the waistband of his jeans, thumb rubbing at the button, he raises one eyebrow at Loki, whose eyes are roaming unabashedly across the newly revealed skin. As if hypnotized, Loki takes one step closer, tongue snaking out to wet his lips.

Not bothering to hide the smirk anymore, Tony thumbs the button open and slowly pulls his zipper down, letting the red cotton of his boxerbriefs peek through. Lower lip drawing between his teeth Loki takes another step closer and completely misses that there is a step, stumbling and catching himself at the last minute. Tony can't help but laugh; the way Loki's eyes fly open wide as he flails looks absolutely hilarious.

He regains his balance in a second but still, it breaks the spell between them, the tension loosening. Which is really too bad because it had been thrilling, the way Loki reacts to Tony's body and skin, to getting to look at him. Tony thinks maybe they can still do the swimming thing – and once they're naked, he isn't worried about things getting heated again. But once he's steady on his feet again Loki looks up with regret in his eyes, still biting his lower lip. "We can't, not until the binding," he says apologetically.

Tony pouts, on the way to seriously disgruntled because what, no sex until marriage? Really? Is Loki for real? Then he remembers that the hunting festival thing is tomorrow. "So that means tomorrow, right?" When Loki nods he still pouts a little, but it's mostly for show. "I at least want a kiss, then."

Immediately Loki walks down the two steps separating them and pulls Tony's face towards him with a hand at the back of his head, licking into his mouth while his other hand slides from Tony's hips to his waist around to his back, touching the newly revealed skin. He even makes a noise low in his throat that sends shivers down Tony's back. Never would he have thought somebody would react like that just because he takes his shirt off, but in comparison, all the Jötnar has seen were dressed seriously skimpily. To Loki Tony is probably dressed puritanically.

That's pretty exciting, actually. Tony takes the opportunity to cop a feel of Loki's skin as well, but there's something still bothering him a little, and when they pull apart, breathing into each other, he voices the nagging question. "So when we do this you'll have to be human, right?"

Loki licks his lips, eyes attentive as he looks at Tony. "Not necessarily. It is merely a question of me learning – adapting my body temperature. It's a part of shifting my shape; I will learn to control regulating my body temperature and adaptivity only."

That sounds... complicated. "You're not going to learn that until tomorrow, right?"

Looking offended, Loki leans back. "I will. I am the most talented shape shifter to have ever been born." He huffs. "I learned to shift into a male human only today. Do you really doubt my abilities?"

This again. Tony blinks and frowns. Loki mentioned this before and Tony has no idea how difficult this whole shape shifting thing is, but that sounds really quick. Especially since he didn't see Loki practice, and as far as he can tell Loki had no issues. He changed right at the beginning of their first kiss, for heaven's sake. Tony had been too distracted to even remember how to _breathe_.

Okay, yeah, so that does sound impressive. "You've mentioned this before, right? That's pretty amazing."

"It is." Loki nods in agreement. "I have changed into a human female's shape before, but female shapes are very different."

And Tony's brain screeches to a halt. "You've changed into a girl?"

"I have changed into a female human version of myself," Loki corrects, not the first time he's corrected Tony's terminology; the distinction is clearly important to him.

Tony is more occupied thinking about girl version of Loki. "So... would you be opposed to doing that again at one point? You know. I'm curious."

Lifting one eyebrow, Loki sees right through Tony. "Curious, or interested?"

"...interested," Tony has to admit. "I mean I don't care about the equipment like that, but uh. It would be... interesting. Also I'm curious how girl version of you looks."

"Maybe I might show you one day, then." Loki smiles sweetly and takes Tony's hand, pulling him back up the stairs. "Now, you should definitely know where to obtain food."

They leave the pool and Tony only remembers that he forgot his t-shirt when they're already most of the way back to the elevator shaft and a shiver shakes him. He gasps and rubs his hands up and down his arms, nipples peaking; he didn't even notice it getting colder because Loki was explaining to him how food worked here. (The main food source is, unsurprisingly, meat. Jötunheimr keeps up a steady trade with other realms though and generally has a good supply of fruit and vegetables, mostly dried but some fresh. As of yet Tony may eat what he wants but eventually he'll have to contribute, either by hunting or by doing something else to benefit society. Tony finds it very interesting that Jötnar consider somebody an adult at the same age most countries on Midgard consider somebody an adult and wonders if there is a correlation, what it's like on Asgard.)

"Wow, sneaky," Tony comments, rubbing his arms in an insufficient attempt to warm up a little. With a beatific smile, Loki steps up to him and settles his cloak around Tony's shoulders again, much like he did when they first met, fingers brushing across Tony's naked skin as he does up the first set of buttons on the inside of the coat. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Looking very satisfied with himself, Loki steps back, brushing his hand down the front of the coat. As he does that his skin seeps blue again, the lines reappearing as his eyes tint from green to red again. Fascinated, Tony watches and once the change is complete he leans in to brush a quick kiss to Loki's lips. They're cold, very cold, but no metal pole tongue freezing level.

Lips quirking up, Loki hooks his hand around Tony's arm again and leads him down the rest of the way back to the elevator shaft. Tony lets him, slightly bemused but deciding to let the whole leading him around thing pass for now. Right now Loki has an excuse anyway, Tony doesn't know his way around, and it's not like Tony minds the whole holding hands thing. Only when he's wearing the coat and Loki guides him by a hand on the back or his arm, it feels more like Loki is handling Tony.

They get to the elevator shaft, and Tony is faced with a wholly different difficulty. "...so. How do we get up?"

Loki's smirk is slightly disconcerting. "Can you pronounce yläpää?"

Tony snorts. "Right, pull the other one. I can't even pronounce the word umlaut properly, much less a word that's sixty percent made up of them."

"Then, hold on tight." They're standing too far away from the elevator shaft for Loki to pull his move again, and he makes no attempt to anyway. Instead he leads a dubious Tony to the entrance and steps up real close to him, guiding Tony's arms around his body.

Tony licks his lips and doesn't quite accidentally nudge his nose against Loki's cheek; Loki is a little taller than him like this, as a Jötnar. The difference to his human version is not striking, but it still exists, interestingly. One day Loki will be a fully-grown Jötnar and Tony can probably see him literally shrink when he changes shape.

Keeping Tony very close, Loki steps backwards into the elevator shaft. At first nothing happens, and then Tony starts to feel weird. It begins slowly; he just feels a little lighter, and then suddenly their feet are lifting off the ground and they start levitating, then floating upwards, gaining speed, and suddenly they're falling head first up the elevator shaft. It's a mind fuck if anything is.

They stop falling relatively quickly until they're levitating in mid-air, but not for long; with a quickness that speaks of much practice Loki nudges them out the entry to the elevator shaft, into a corridor. Loki says it's one level above the ground level but to Tony everything looks pretty much the same.

Hearing that, Loki laughs. "You are not to first to say so. You will learn to pay attention to what matters. The pattern and color of the netting, the angle and width of the tunnel, population levels at which time of day, details like that."

Tony doubts that, but if Loki says so, well. It would be nice if one day Tony could navigate his way through this place on his own. He is not looking forward to needing Loki to guide him to places.

He tries to pay attention to the way Loki leads him, and while it probably won't help much, he does remember the directions – down the corridor, then left, then right, straight, left, straight, straight, left, into a wide room. It's freezing here, Tony's breath turns to clouds around him but for once it's a good thing, because there's meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling, lots and lots of it, in neat rows. Other meat is stored in shelves – that's from animals who freeze when they die, as Loki informs Tony. Because apparently not all of them do, even those native to Jötunheimr.

Tony watches a bit curiously as several people who seem to work here handle the meat; either handing off different sizes of frozen chunks or cutting bits from the meat hanging from the hooks. They're pretty big pieces, definitely larger even than cows, giving Tony an impression of how big animals can get here. It seems paradox; on Midgard, the colder a place gets, the smaller the animals are generally speaking. Following that logic, the biggest animal around here should be mice. Except Jötnar are pretty big compared to humans, so maybe that's a theme here? Besides, apparently not all animals freeze upon death here.

"Would you like meat or plants?" Loki asks. "Wait, you cook meat before eating, correct?"

"...yeah." Tony eyes the display in front of him. "Do you even have bread here?"

Frowning thoughtfully, Loki looks out the door. "We might." Taking Tony's arm again he pulls him out of the meat room and down the corridor towards an entrance in the opposing wall; it's a room as big as the meat room filled with lots of containers, clay and wood and stone in various shapes, and cloth bags. Loki strides up to one of the people apparently working here – they don't wear an uniform so Tony has absolutely no idea how people can recognize them – and asks them for bread. Tony can understands what Loki says, but he absolutely can't understand what the Jötnar replies. The language he speaks sounds both more melodic and more guttural than English; Tony assumes it's the same language Loki used when telling Tony the names of things but it's very different hearing single words as opposed to full sentences. They have a bit of a conversation in the process of which the worker heads to one of the shelves and gets two cloth bags; Loki waves Tony over as the worker opens them on a table and shows what's inside. One of them contains little round balls that look like bread, light brown and shiny, but are hard as stone.

"...this is bread?" Tony asks.

"Ālfheimr," Loki shrugs, like that's any sort of reply. The other bag contains fist-sized rolls, much darker in shade and actually soft. When compared to the stony balls, in any case. The worker splits one open so Tony can take a closer look and it's dark brown inside as well, but actually pretty soft. Accepting a small ripped off piece to try, Tony chews slowly. It tastes like bread – a little different, but the consistence is softer than Tony would have expected, the taste richer somehow, slightly nutty, grainy and not as smooth as he's used to, but it's good.

"You want it?" Loki asks.

"Yeah. Uh, three of those?"

Loki repeats the order to the worker, who nods and hands three pieces over, the one he split open for Tony to check out included. Tony squeezes the bread a little, surprised at how fresh it feels – and that it's not frozen.

"These shelves are enchanted to keep higher temperatures for food containing water," Loki answers Tony's question.

"Cool." Tony curiously eyes the shelves, but can see no difference. "What else is there?"

Loki gestures a different worker over that Tony can actually understand, who tells Tony what sorts of other food they have stored in the warm shelves; cheese, dried fruits and vegetables, even some fresh stuff. None of which Tony is actually familiar with, but he picks some cheese and some of everything else, partly out of curiosity, partly based on what Loki can tell him.

"We can actually cook," Loki says, even though Jötnar actually apparently mostly eat their food raw, "If you would like to. I have a lab."

"Not today," Tony waves him off. "I'm good." More than, actually; there's enough stuff for tomorrow, even.

Loki organized a bag of cloth to transport everything in and then they go one level down via the elevator shaft – the maha level, Loki tells Tony with a teasing smile, clearly amused by Tony's inability to pronounce stuff; maha is the first thing he can actually correctly pronounce, apart from Loki and Laufey's names.

"You shut up," Tony grumbles, squeezing Loki's hand that has somehow wound its way into the coat's sleeve to twine with his, "you with your magical Allspeak."

"I actually do speak English," Loki points out a little smugly. "And several other languages. No Allspeak."

Unable to repress a smirk, Tony glances at him. "You have a talented tongue, huh?"

Raising one eyebrow, Loki smirks as well. "I do indeed."

"Nice." Grinning, Tony nods. Loki wouldn't get the reference, but that's not why he said it anyway. "So, where are we going? You haven't said yet." 

"To get you some furs," Loki replies. "For bedding. And you wished for clothes, correct?"

"I guess." Tony glances down, but since he's wearing the coat it's his memory that provides the image of the jeans he's wearing. Jeans, sneakers and underwear. He doesn't fancy the thought of spending the rest of his life in hotpants (as much as he does when considering Loki in the same situation), but Loki's wearing boots, so at least shoes Tony won't have to worry about. "So are we going someplace to get things like that?"

"My rooms, to be precise," Loki corrects, throwing Tony a slightly put-off glance. "I would never permit somebody else to provide your furs."

Okay... so furs are Serious Business. That will take some time to get used to. "So you're going to give me yours?"

"I am a good hunter," Loki sniffs, a bit piqued. "I have enough furs to provide for the both of us. Besides, from tomorrow on we may share a bed, should we so wish."

"Alright, alright, don't get your panties in a twist. Fur isn't really a big deal where I'm from, okay? But it is here, I take it."

Loki sniffs, looking unimpressed. "Yes. Do not take another's fur. Do not accept another's fur, barring a case of emergency – nobody will offer you, anyway, but in the extremely unlikely event that they might, do not accept it."

He pushes a woven curtain aside – Tony has seen several of those; as far as he can tell all occupied rooms have a curtain in the doorway leading out into the hall, which means he needs to get one too – and guides Tony past. They're in a hall room much like the one connecting Tony's rooms to the hallway, but it's bigger and more rooms lead out of it, most of which are curtained off. Loki makes a beeline for one of them, lifting the patterned cloth for Tony to walk past again before following him inside, except Tony stops in his track in the middle of the doorway so Loki ends up plastered to Tony's back. Not that he appears to mind, going by the way he wraps one arm around Tony's waist and doesn't let go.

Tony doesn't mind either, but he's a little preoccupied. From what he'd seen of his own rooms he had thought the Jötnar were Spartan in their furnishing, but this presumably Loki's room is the opposite. The stone walls are covered by several woven carpets like the ones covering the doorways, only these aren't patterned with geometrical or fractal structures; instead they're pictures, landscapes, situations that Tony assumes are stills from stories. The bed is clearly visible and covered in furs and pillows and some cloth blankets, there is a table littered with stuff ranging from books over scrolls to knick-knacks. The shelves are in a similar state; there are a lot of books and scrolls but a lot of other stuff as well, daggers and pretty boxes made of wood with carved patterns, bottles, clay containers, objects Tony doesn't quite know what they are. One wall is lined with wooden and even some stone chests, all of which carved with pretty patterns and runes. There are some chairs with stuff and fur thrown over them and even an armchair. All in all, it's not cluttered but pretty far from Spartan, and actually sort of messy.

"My room," Loki says after a moment of Tony staring silently.

Tony suddenly realizes how awkward he must be feeling; he knows what it's like to let somebody into one's room. His own room was a safe zone but every now and then one of his parents would invade it and Tony never felt good about it. "It's pretty cool. No, seriously, I sort of want to touch everything."

With a laugh, Loki lets go of Tony and steps past him, making way for the chests. "You may explore later. Now we need to ensure your comfort." Kneeling down, he digs deep into the chest he opened; it's filled with clothes, and evidently Jötnar wear more than just hotpants sometimes, or at least Loki owns a bunch of shirts. Two at the very least, because he unearths them and hands them over to Tony for inspection. They're made of cotton or something like it, long-sleeved and soft, one light brown, the other bright green. Tony approves. Then Loki hands him a pair of leather hotpants that make Tony a little less happy, and the pair of leggings Loki finds afterward don't cheer him up much either. After some searching Loki shrugs and gives Tony another pair of hotpants, informing him that if Tony wants different pants and they can't find any tomorrow they'll have to go to a market off Jötunheimr, which they can do soon, if Tony wishes. Which Tony does. Maybe he'll find underwear too, and socks. It was seriously stupid bringing absolutely nothing.

"We can find you proper boots as well," Loki says, glancing at Tony's colorful sneakers. "They are best custom-made, of course. We should go tomorrow, before the hunt; during and after the festival the bootmaker is very busy and the earlier we put in our order, the better."

Tony just shrugs; in the caves he's okay with his sneakers, mostly because the fur coat is long enough to almost cover his feet, but he figures should he ever go outside or, god beware, not have the coat, he'll think differently. Something leather and warm and higher than reaching to his ankles would not be amiss.

After digging through a different chest and also picking a blanket and fur off his own bed, Loki's carrying armfuls of Tony's bedding while Tony carries his food and clothes. Thus laden, they return to the elevator shaft, where Loki assures Tony that he absolutely needs no help; going down is very easy, so long as he wishes to go all the way down, which they do. It's still nerve-wrecking, but they arrive safely and then trek back to Tony's room. He's getting the feeling he's going to be very bored of all this walking around soon; he should get some inline skaters or a skateboard or something. The carved floor is a smooth and perfect surface for that sort of thing.

Loki heaps his armfuls of fur onto Tony's bed, arranging one for on the bottom, a cloth sheet on top, another cloth sheet and two furs as blankets, and the two pillows he somehow managed to transport as well. Apparently, despite Loki's own messed up bed, there is supposed to be an order; Loki explains that Tony is to lie between the two woven blankets which makes sense, furs are probably hard to wash, unlike the blankets.

"Are you tired?" Loki asks, tugging the last corners of the made bed into place.

Tony shrugs a little and puts his armful of clothes at the footend of the bed. "Sort of. It's... a lot has happened, today."

"I can leave you to it," Loki immediately offers, retreating a step or two. "Give you some time to get settled in. I can come back in the morning."

Tony's first impulse is to say no; he likes Loki and he likes the company, likes not being alone, but he probably does need some time to settle in, gather his thoughts. Everything is so very different to how he expected it to be, Loki included. It's all so strange, but so much _better_ , too. Tony thinks... Tony thinks he might be happy here. Hell, it looks like he can even get something like electricity, and Loki's trying really hard to make him comfortable.

It's good here, is the thing, potentially even great, and weird as it sounds, he needs some time to adapt to that.

"I guess I do need some time to myself," he admits. "I mean. A lot has happened."

"I understand," Loki is quick to assure, suddenly awkward as he focuses on the floor instead of looking at Tony. "Or, well, I don't, not really but I can imagine everything being very strange to you." He grimaces a little. "The king tried to negotiate with Odin so he would allow your parents to at least accompany you and stay until the binding, but was not successful."

"Thank god," Tony breathes, impulsive. "I mean, I appreciate it, I do, but my parents? They're not really... well, I wouldn't have felt better with them here. Not that I feel bad! Not at all. I'd probably feel worse if they were here. I mean, you've been very nice. I don't feel bad at all. I probably would if they were here though." Just the thought of it is off-putting, vaguely ludicrous but also severely uncomfortable. His mother would turn her nose up at everything, from the temperatures over the clothing and interior design down to even Loki and the Jötnar themselves, and his father would probably sneer a lot and do his best to try to find out what the netting is made up, how it works. Tony plans to do that too, yes, but... Tony is going to live here. His father would have been invasive about it, disregarding all manners and norms, the way he gets when he really wants to know (or do) something.

No, Tony wouldn't have felt better with them here.

"That... uh." Loki grimaces. "That sounds not... well, I'm glad you don't feel bad?"

Tony shakes his head impatiently. "Stop it. I don't feel bad. I like it here. You've been awesome, and I want to kiss you a lot, shit I didn't mean to say that... but I do. And... I just need some time to settle. Everything is very different to how I'm used to, which isn't a bad thing, it's just... a thing I need to think about."

Nodding quickly, Loki offers a small smile. "If you wish to go anywhere – do you remember the way from the elevator to my room?" When Tony shakes his head, he grimaces a little. "It's no matter, people know where I live. To use the elevator, all you need to do is keep the thought of the level you wish to go to firmly in your mind – maha, you remember that, right?" Tony does, if only because it's the only word so far he not only can pronounce but also spell, probably. "Good. You enter the elevator and think that word really hard, maha. You will be transported to the level my room is on, and anyone you meet there can guide you to my room. They will be happy to help you even if they don't understand you; if that's the case just say my name or show them the rune, but there probably will be somebody available with Allspeak, and in any case they should be able to figure out what you want." Loki waits until Tony nods to indicate that he understands before adding, "You may come to me at any time, no matter what it is you wish or need. I will come back tomorrow in the morning."

"Okay." Tony swallows a little, then figures what the hell, that's his soulmate here, and steps up to Loki, drawing him into a short kiss. All their kisses have been on the breathtaking rather than awkward side that Tony had expected, and this one is as well, dispelling the weird sense of nervousness and tension that suddenly built up between them. When they pull apart Tony feels a lot less unsure, if still a little shy about what he plans to say next. "Thanks. I mean it, you've been- you _are_ great. I like it here. I l-like you."

Loki's resulting smile is brilliant and sweet, making Tony flush a little. Okay, a little _more_. "I like you too." He quickly pecks Tony on the lips before stepping away further. "It's unlikely somebody will arrive before I will get here, but tomorrow the visitors will come as well, so the hallways down here will be busier as well, don't forget. Also, do you remember the way to the bath?"

"It's literally just down the corridor, so yes, I think I do." Tony smiles a little. "Thanks."

Loki nods quickly, smiles and then ducks out of the room. His feet are soundless on the floor so Tony can't even listen to his fading steps; he waits for a moment, then peeks out of the room, then out of the room between his room and the hallway, just barely catching sight of Loki before he vanishes around a bend.

He's alone.

Relatively. Part of him wants to chase after Loki and ask him to stay, but yeah, he needs a moment to breathe and adapt to his new circumstances, to how... not at all wrong he feels here. He would have expected to feel like a stranger but while everything is strange, nothing familiar, it doesn't feel like _Tony_ is a stranger. People stare at him but mostly not in a hostile way, and at the food places they treated him perfectly normally, like anybody else, even though so far Tony has only seen Jötnar here, nobody else.

People are nice, is the thing, which Tony hadn't expected, and Loki is... even better, which Tony hadn't expected either. Meeting his soulmate went very differently to how he thought it would; Loki is hot, and cute, and funny, cheeky and a little arrogant, but in between the teasing he's been very sweet. Tony thinks... yeah, Tony doesn't think he'll hate it here. At all.

The next day Loki is there bright and early; Tony has just gotten up and made a trip to the bathroom, feeling silly about washing in the huge pool and then even sillier because he didn't have a towel, and how do people brush their teeth here? Clearly there is a lot Tony needs to know still.

"You are eating," Loki says, sounding a little surprised.

"Breakfast," Tony replies where he's making something of a burger out of the rolls, cheese and some leftover vegetables. He found a dagger in the bag of food, clearly left there by a thoughtful food worker person or possibly by Loki, and managed to more or less cut everything into uneven slices – the roll and cheese and that weird vegetable that looks a bit like an apple and tastes faintly of cauliflower – to stack into sandwiches. "Want to try some? I ate all the fruit already though." Luckily Tony has never been one to rely on sweet breakfasts, even if he's fond of them. The fruit had been seriously good though, sweet and juicy and tasting of honey and a bit of almonds, just really good.

"Interesting," Loki comments, coming closer to eye Tony's sandwich. Tony rolled the furs towards the wall, mindful of crumbs, and is sitting on the bed; he pats the empty space beside him and Loki takes a seat, cautiously taking a bite of the burger-sandwich when Tony offers. He chews thoughtfully and proclaims it "interesting, not bad".

Then he looks around the room and raises his eyebrow at the mess of electronics Tony has stacked into piles and onto the chairs he brought over from the other room. There are some essentials and lots of stuff for repairing the heart of his collection: a metal suitcase, currently closed. Tony stated working on this when he was four, really; not consistently but in his mind. When he was nine he grew more determined and seriously put his effort into the plans leading to a brief stalling period when he had been eleven, because he needed something to power the thing too.

It was absolutely worth it, if Tony says so, and having gotten a closer look at the environment here and the requirements he can say with satisfaction that he planned well; he'll do good. Operation: blow Loki's mind and get blown in return is a go.

"What is all this?" Loki asks curiously. "This is what you brought instead of... clothes?"

"Instead of everything," Tony confirms with a nod. "This is what I do. I can explain it to you in detail later, you will see it in action today. Just to clarify, what are the requirements for the hunt?" That's something that occurred to him yesterday, after he had eaten and looked through his equipment, making sure everything survived the trip and was good to go (it was). What if there are rules like no use of tools or something?

Loki tilts his head. "I don't understand exactly what you mean. Technically, teams or groups are allowed, but everybody who participates in a joint effort is excluded from the competition. Also you and I, this time, are required to hunt on our own due to this being part of our binding. Is that what you mean?"

"I was more wondering about the use of tools and what I can wear, since I'd freeze anyway if I had to show up in my normal clothes and that's hardly fair, right?"

Loki shrugs. "There are no rules. Well, none for humans, at least. Fire Demons are not allowed to use fire, the use of magic is not permitted excluding for transport, and of course you should try not to damage the fur. Would you like to borrow some weapons from me?"

"Nah." Tony grins. "I'm good." He nods towards the suitcase. The fire and magic thing is a bit of a hindrance – well, the fire, in any case; Tony can't do magic but what he can do probably qualifies under the same parameters, so he has to watch out. "Unless you have something with a longer blade than this one I can use, that would probably be good."

"I say," Loki agrees dryly. "Yes."

Tony nods, swallows his last mouthful, brushes the crumbs off his hands and thighs and then basically pounces, straddling Loki while pressing his mouth to his. He gives Loki a moment to gasp and be surprised, then deepens the kiss, tongue flicking across Loki's lips before he licks along the seam of his mouth and inside, meeting Loki's tongue. As he lay in bed last night he'd remembered their kisses, half surprised, half skeptical that it really should have been as good as he had thought it had been; kissing Loki now however proves that his memory hadn't been wrong or fanciful. Loki's taste, the way he eagerly moves into the kiss, boldly puts his hands on Tony's body, nips with his teeth and teases with his tongue... fuck, yeah. Best kisses Tony has ever had by a huge margin. He doesn't ever want to kiss anybody else.

They kiss for a while, bodies going still as they concentrate only on their mouths, Tony's hands on Loki's face and Loki's on Tony's hips, under his shirt. Tony vaguely thinks that he shouldn't be this breathless with it, with just this, but he is, he really is, it's dizzying, and eventually he's forced to pull away. Drawing in a couple of deep breaths, he stares at Loki. Those green eyes look almost unnatural, oversaturated, but Loki says that's what he'd look like if he were human, so it can't have been done on purpose. Besides, Tony has seen strangely colored eyes on TV before. A girl with Caribbean turquoise eyes, a guy with a color that was almost purple, and he'd known a girl with legit midnight blue eyes. So, this is probably Loki's true human eye color. Fascinating. And it totally gives Tony an excuse for being entranced by his soulmate's eyes, because that would probably be a little embarrassing otherwise, such a cliché.

"Wait a second," Loki says, a little breathless, and pushes Tony off him. With a puzzled pout, Tony goes, then gets to watch as Loki's skin bleeds blue again, eyes turning red and yeah, this color is pretty fascinating too, especially when offset against the rich blue of Loki's skin. His eyes almost sparkle, a rich, deep red that reminds Tony of rubies, and okay, comparing his soulmate's eyes to gems, that _is_ embarrassing no matter how amazing they are.

Loki bites his lower lip for a moment, gaze turning distant, then focuses on Tony again, nodding decisively. "Alright. Touch me." He holds out his arm.

A little confused, Tony reaches out, careful to touch Loki's skin with the back of his hand instead of his fingertips, which are more sensitive. To his surprise he finds that Loki isn't as cold as he expected by far, though. Still cool, probably cold enough for Tony's dick to lose interest if they got involved that way, but totally workable. Immediately Tony is on Loki again, drawing him into a kiss and he can't help but think of this as their first real, proper kiss. The others had been real as well, yes, certainly, but Loki hadn't been himself in a way; he'd been a version of himself but there is a distinction and it didn't bother Tony per se, but he still prefers this. He doesn't want Loki only in disguise.

Like this, Loki's taste isn't much changed; his mouth is cooler of course and he does taste a little different, but not significantly so. That, if Loki's words hadn't already, would have convinced Tony that Loki is truly himself even when he isn't. The different temperature is a little strange at first, especially because it stays that way; Loki doesn't warm up – of course he wouldn't – and eventually Tony has to pull away because his tongue gets too sluggish, his lips a little numb.

"A little warmer, then?" Loki asks, brows furrowed a little as he reaches out to touch Tony's lips with his fingers.

Instead of replying, Tony flicks his tongue out and licks the tips of Loki's fingers, then draws them into his mouth and sucks. He's seen this in porn before and he never really got why they did it – fingers aren't that great and they aren't an erogenous zone either – but now, watching Loki's eyes hone in on Tony's lips, getting to see his eyes dilate and his mouth drop open just a little, clearly subconsciously, all because Tony is sucking on Loki's fingers... it's a heady feeling, and Tony suddenly gets it. It's a tease, a hint of what's to come, maybe even a promise. Loki is looking at where his fingers disappear into Tony's mouth and imagining his dick, and Tony is sucking on Loki's fingers and imagining the way he'll look when Tony takes his dick into his mouth. It's a heady thought; Tony feels powerful with the way Loki is looking at him now, how much more intoxicating will it be when they're actually doing it?

Eventually, though, he has to scale back a little, lets Loki's fingers slip from his mouth and gives both of them a moment to catch their breaths. He's hard as rock in his pants and Loki seems in a similar state, which means they should stop.

Loki apparently agrees, even if he's reluctant. "We need to go. It's getting late."

Tony pouts a little but doesn't protest when Loki takes his hand and pulls him out of the room. Just a few steps down the hallway, they come across three dark gray-skinned people with long limbs and unruly dark hair. They recognize Loki immediately and their formal greeting – they put their fists to their chests and indicate bows, bending at the waist – startles Tony into the realization that in all the time he's been here (which admittedly hasn't been that long yet), he hasn't witnessed one moment of formality, not even when Loki introduced him to Laufey, his mother and the king. As a consequence it's a little strange seeing Loki respond with equal formality now, spine straight and one hand on his chest as he inclines his head, expression serious even as he won't let go of Tony's hand. They exchange some formal-sounding words – the Nachtalps greet the son of King Laufey, Loki Laufeyson greets Ara, Brun and Friedlich of the Nachtalps, and then Loki introduces Tony as "his intended, Anthony Edward Stark of Midgard," and the Nachtalps turn their eerie, pupilless eyes on Tony and do the same fist-bow combo, greeting Anthony Edward Stark of Midgard and intended of Loki, son of Laufey, king of Midgard. It's a long title but Tony doesn't like how it relies primarily on Tony's connection to other people. He will get known for his own merits, he swears.

He's almost about to return his own greeting when Loki squeezes his hand and says, "Tony, these are Brun, Friedlich and Ara of the Nachtalps."

Feeling awkward with not knowing the protocol, Tony sticks to copying Loki, doing the fist-chest-bow thing andsaying the "I greet Ara, Brun and Friedlich of the Nachtalps" greeting, probably wrangling Friedlich's name horribly in the process, but in his defense, the "ch" sound is weird and feels misshapen in his mouth. He probably doesn't offend someone though, because apparently with protocol sufficiently satisfied, the Nachtalps continue on their way. They're all wearing thick, heavy coats, Tony notices; they apparently don't much like the cold either, especially considering they're still heading into the warmer direction.

Nachtalps, Loki explains, live in Svartálfaheimr and and have been allied with the Jötnar for eons. As they walk to the shoemaker and even while they sit there as Tony's feet are being measured, Loki explains a bit more about politics and the difference of being allied with a people and a realm. (The latter implying that all of the people in the realm are united, something which is only the case with Asgard, Midgard, Jötunheimr and Muspelheimr.) Jötunheimr is apparently a bit of a special case though because there are several tribes that all work together, so it's actually somewhere in the middle.

"Wait," Tony frowns. "It's the same with Midgard though. We have lots of countries – tribes, if you will – that more or less work together. Sometimes. Some of them fight.

It's Loki's turn to frown. "Are they nomadic?"

"Most aren't," Tony replies, thinking of people like the Travellers and Romani, "Some, but most... the countries have borders and different governments and everything."

"Very interesting." Loki tilts his head. "We don't know much about Midgard. Asgard is very possessive. After our foiled invasion they did not tolerate even other realms coming into contact with Midgard. Though most people weren't overly interested, as your world has no inert magic."

That's the first time Tony hears this, but he's rapidly getting used to that feeling. "Yeah, what does that actually mean? Because I don't get it."

Loki's following explanation is a bit convoluted as he clearly has no idea how to explain to someone with no frame of reference, but it boils down to this: all realms, some more, some less, have an inert magic, an underlying energy that is in everything and everyone. Some people can utilize that energy; magicians, witches, however you may want to call them, essentially. That's why there are no magic users on Midgard: no magic, nothing to use, even if somebody might have had the ability. Except it's not actually nothing and not actually nobody, but the exceptions and why they are exceptions are confusing and Tony decides to pretend not to remember the few Midgardians who can perform magic. He will stick to the simplified explanations until he has a better understanding of what magic actually is.

"I can offer a pair of temporary boots, actually," the shoemaker suddenly says. "They were originally made for Föhr but, uh..."

Loki doesn't even bother to suppress his amused grin. "Of course."

Sensing that he's the bottom of some joke right now, Tony frowns. "What?"

"Föhr had a growth spur," Loki informs him, still grinning. "He's now this high," he holds a hand up to his waist, "and consequently grew out of these boots. Your feet are tiny," he adds to make absolutely sure Tony gets the point.

Flushing a little – so Tony is a little small, whatever, he'll hit a growth spurt and besides, these people aren't called giants for no reason – Tony scowls. "Whatever, my shoes are fine."

Loki looks down at Tony's feet sceptically, but chooses not to say anything else. Instead he focuses on the shoemaker of the unpronounceable name (it's Aðalþegn but Friedlich is the height of what Tony can more or less manage, emphasis on the less), who returns with a pair of dark brown boots for Tony to try on. Tony would love to be able to say they're too small but fact of the matter is, they fit perfectly. If anything, they're a little loose, but with a pair of thicker socks – that Tony doesn't have – they'd be perfect.

He stubbornly refuses to admit as much, though, just scowls and says that they're okay. Loki laughs a little, but not meanly, and kisses Tony on the cheek like he's having a good time, which is cute enough that Tony can't keep scowling.

After the boots Loki shows him around the city a little, explaining the different levels to him – vaguely specialized, but not strict enough to be restricted or anything like that. Besides, now with the festival everything is a little out of order anyway. And even Tony, having only arrived yesterday, can tell the difference already, the corridors are a lot busier and he sees a lot more not-Jötnar around. And while few of them look like humans and most look stranger, Tony apparently reached his quota for culture shock yesterday because he feels no inclination to stare or even ask Loki that many questions. He's a little preoccupied with the upcoming hunt; he asks Loki about restrictions again because the last thing he wants to be accused of his cheating, and apparently he's restricted to anything that doesn't have young with it and that has a pelt. Or that's very big, not a rule but a guideline for his own safety, Loki adds, but he doesn't seem to think that is going to be a viable option to Tony. Well, he's going to be surprised.

They go to Loki's quarters eventually where Loki lets Tony pick any blade of his he wants. He picks one as long as his forearm, belt and sheath included, and lets Loki convince him to take a dagger as well. Loki is growing worried, that much is apparent; he starts giving Tony tips such as he should try to throw the dagger and hit the eye, though a moment later he admits how unlikely Tony's success is with that, what with how little experience in knife throwing he has. As in, none.

"Loki," Tony eventually says after the seventh "helpful" tip, "the more stories about finger-long teeth and how to avoid them you tell me, the more worried I get. And there absolutely is no reason to worry. We had a deal, remember?"

Loki frowns a little. "Of course."

"Mind-blowing," Tony reminds him, one eyebrow raised. "And on that note I need to go to my room and get something."

Back at his rooms, Tony picks up the two red metal suitcases. Then he pauses and glances at Loki, who is still looking tense, and makes a snap decision.

"Watch," he says, putting the smaller suitcase back on the floor. On the bigger one he presses a couple of buttons, gets his hand scanned and then hugs it to his chest. "Employ."

The suit starts unfolding like a Transformer – honestly an inspiration in that aspect, Tony is not embarrassed to admit it – wrapping around his torso and unfolding further from there, down Tony's legs and arms. He tested it a dozen times even after he had smoothed out all kinks and small issues, just like he'd tested the suit's functions, and earlier today he put the suit on to test whether it had survived the trip without any difficulties and was okay. So when it slides on now it does so smoothly, finishes within the minute and then Tony stands there, covered from the neck down in a red and gold painted metal suit. He'd picked the warmest colors he could think of when he painted it, a choice made for reasons Tony can't quite understand anymore now but it doesn't matter anyway. Having seen Jötunheimr, he knows he'll probably be easily visible which on the one hand is good, but in light of all the hunting he's supposed to be doing probably isn't really. Not that Tony has ever been hunting so how would he know?

Also, he still needs to find out if he's not defying any rules with this, and what Loki even thinks. Some people might call this cheating, but Tony doesn't see how utilizing all his resources could count as cheating.

Still, he's a little nervous about what Loki will say, and thus takes his time getting the helmet out of the other suitcase – the only separate piece. At first he'd meant to add it to the process but he had been a little wary about the whole automatic process and the consequences of his head getting in the way, and then the process had been too advanced, meaning adding a new element would have meant starting from the beginning all over again. But it's not really much of a problem adding the helmet afterwards either way. He'll eventually find a way to include the helmet in the process but right now it's good enough as it is.

This suit is pretty badass either way, helmet added afterward or not. That's the thought Tony focuses on when he turns around to face Loki, trying not to look nervous at least since he's unsuccessful in trying not to feel it.

Loki's face at first doesn't tell him much; he looks stunned, eyes round, but his brows are furrowed a little.

Knowing his grin is a little too wide but unable to change it, Tony spreads his arms. "So? What do you say?"

"This is a full body armor," Loki says. He could hardly state anything more obvious than that and Tony struggles to keep his expression from slipping but if this is going to be an issue, fuck if he's going to show Loki just how much so.

With two quick steps Loki strides up to him, hand reaching out to carefully touch the chest of the armor where the miniature arc reactor he built glows. It might or might not have been a huge satisfaction thumbing his nose at his father for making the reactor he invented so much more efficient and small. "It's- did you make this yourself?"

"Well, yeah." Tony lets his arms sink. "Something like this doesn't exist on Midgard. Literally, because I made it and then I took it with me and destroyed all evidence. So, yeah. Absolutely unique."

Loki looks up and stares at him for a moment. "It's protection?" Suddenly he blinks and his intense expression breaks into a smile. "So you will be fine today. That's wonderful."

Tony pouts a little. "I won't be just fine. I'll catch you a thing, remember? And wait, was it ever a possibility that I _wouldn't_ be fine?"

"Jötunheimr is populated by dangerous predators," Loki says earnestly, then suddenly laughs and hugs Tony. "But with this, you won't die, even if you are attacked. This is brilliant, Tony."

It's clear he means it, but it's also clear Loki doesn't really understand what the suit is and does. Tony is feeling a little constipated about that until he remembers that he's spent the past two days not understanding anything, the netting Loki had been so proud of included. This is probably a thing that's going to happen often.

No matter, though. Once Tony uses the suit Loki will get it. Or at least understand a little better why it's so amazing. Tony will have to be patient like Loki has been patient with him.

Besides, Loki at least realized that the suit is brilliant, which is a big something already, right? So Tony smiles and nods and then clarifies with Loki that it's not breaking any rules, which it apparently isn't – nothing like this has ever been there before but since it's clearly not magic, there is no rule against it. Besides, just because Jötnar hunt half-naked doesn't mean other people do too, and there is no dress code.

"Come," Loki says eventually, after he has examined the suit a little closer, curious and excited. He also helped wrap the belt with the small sword and dagger around Tony's hips. Not that Tony needed the help, but even if he couldn't feel it he would never refuse an opportunity to have Loki touch him. "We need to go. It's almost time."

So they go, leaving Loki's coat in Tony's room since with the suit he doesn't need it, and make their way out of the mountain. Tony is fairly sure they're coming out somewhere different than where they entered but he doesn't know for sure. It's not important, anyway; it's not like Tony knows his way around this place at all and also he's too busy looking around to really care right now.

There are a lot of people. Really, _a lot_. At least twice as many as all the people Tony came across since his arrival, which especially today has been a great many, actually. They stand around in groups or walk; some have even settled down with tents and there are a number of stalls selling a lot of food and varied other stuff as well. Some of those stalls and tents are surrounded by nearly invisible globes of light that are clearly enchantments to keep at least the freezing wind out, if not the temperature as well. A couple of bonfires are being set up with wood that Tony supposes these people must have brought from their own realms, since Jötunheimr doesn't exactly seem to be blessed with an abundance of trees. Or plants in general. At all. Curious, Tony stops and stares a couple of times; Loki is explaining to him how important the bi-annual festivals are for diplomacy and to facilitate relations and relationships – such as the one between Tony and Hrinmeer's wife. Tony feels a little managed when Loki puts it like that but, upon noticing Tony's put-upon expression, Loki explains that with his connection to Laufey, Loki and Tony both wield some symbolic power and need to mind protocol when non-Jötnar are involved. Apparently within Jötunheimr it doesn't make much of a difference, but that's not the case when other races are involved. It explains Odin's skewed information, at least.

They don't have time to linger, though; it's almost time for the hunt and they'll have time to explore tomorrow. Loki is walking quickly, hand in Tony's gloved one, and Tony wishes he could put the helmet on already because the air is icy cold and without the helmet all the heat his suit produces just escapes easily through the neck, which sucks a lot. He wants people to see his face though, so he keeps the helmet off as they join an... actually huge gathering of people. It's separated into two groups; the much bigger one made up of what to Tony looks like primarily adults, and the one Loki and Tony join which is made up exclusively of people around their age. Tony doesn't realize what's going on until Laufey starts to make a speech about the hunt and it turns out their group is made up exclusively of people who are old enough to complete the ritual to become bonded at this year's keskikesä.

Seeing Tony's confusion, Loki leans towards him and whispers explanations in his ear; apparently in Jötunheimr people's birthdays are recorded, but the significant dates are the festivals. bindings can only be completed during festivals, which Tony supposes is efficient, if nothing else, as it combines occasions to celebrate.

Some other guy makes a speech as well, something about honor and how awesome binding is, blah blah, Tony doesn't really listen, and then there is some signal that sends the intended off. Apparently the adults have to wait some time before they're allowed to start so the young bondmates at least have a fraction of a chance to catch something nice. Catching nothing at all is a sign of bad luck, catching something great is a sign of good luck; easy to understand. One thing Tony didn't expect was to be sent into the opposite direction of Loki, but some people make sure all bond mates don't walk off together or remotely into the same direction. Tony just barely manages to squeeze in a quick kiss before he's sent off.

He briefly considers flying off right then, but decides that such a dramatic exit might not be in his best interest – he really doesn't want to be disqualified – and walks instead, but not before putting his helmet on. He's freezing and can't feel his ears, but walking and the suit's heat finally having no way to escape warm him up quickly.

It turns out that Jötunheimr isn't as flat as he had initially thought. Yes, it's all ice under his feet, but there are snow drifts and ice drifts and small canyons in the ice. Not enough to hide Tony from view if he suddenly lifted off into the air, though, so he has to walk for a couple of minutes until he's behind a big enough snow drift to ensure people won't see him. The weather and bad light conditions prove advantageous for this; again it's snowing, just a little, but enough so Tony won't have to worry about anybody seeing the arc reactor in the suit's chest or the repulsors when he finally activates them and lifts off.

"Okay," Tony mutters once he's in the air, lifting up steadily. He practiced flying but for obvious reasons, only inside. The wind doesn't exactly make things easier but it doesn't take too long to get used to, and then Tony can finally concentrate on this hunt thing.

When he planned the suit – not really because he thought he'd need it for self defense, but come on, he was not just leaving the country he was literally leaving his planet and his realm; he just needed to know he would have a safe space just in case – he mostly focused on self-defense, meaning he inbuilt a lot of things like radar and scanners. This will hopefully help him find something. Loki told him that it's normal for the hunt to last well into the night when they started barely at noon but Tony doesn't plan on loitering around for hours on end, waiting for some sort of animal. So he uses the heat scanners that are probably going to be his most useful tool here, what with the temperatures.

Not finding much in his direct vicinity – inventing revolutionary technology unfortunately also means that it's not super amazing at the beginning; it works but the range isn't really huge – Tony starts flying around, carefully marking the location from which he started. The suit is equipped to know which direction it's taking by the planet's magnetic field, even if it isn't actually on Earth, so he'll find his way back at least. Belatedly it occurs to him that neither he nor Loki thought of the possibility of him getting lost and what to do in case it happens, which was a pretty stupid oversight of them. He won't get lost though, not with this, so it's no biggie.

He flies around pretty aimlessly, at first straight and then in lazy loops, for over an hour before he decides that something is wrong; it's not possible that in all this time he's truly come across absolutely nothing. Pausing, he mulls it over a little. There's no way the scanner is faulty, he tested it and the suit is in full working order. So there must be something he missed-

Right. Right, the part where there are animals here that don't freeze when they die, which means their bodies are made of something else than water, which means their body temperature is probably significantly lower. Actually everything here has to have a lower core temperature merely in order to survive.

He's such an idiot. Flying a little lower to the ground, Tony sharpens the scanner's focus which simultaneously means shrinking the range, but finally he starts to see shapes in his visor; light blue instead of the ground's dark blue but that's something.

Now he notices that Jötunheimr is by far not as dead and abandoned as he had thought. Once he knows what to look out for he notices a lot of moving things, most of which about the size of a big bunny to a dog. It's amazing how he can't see them at all with his visuals; only with the heat scanner. They might actually be invisible, or at least very, very good at hiding.

Tony doesn't really follow that thought to its logical conclusion – that there must be something these animals are hiding from – until something the size of a freaking elephant moves into his line of vision.

"Jesus!" Tony flinches back; he's close enough to the ground that he can actually see it, which means it can see him. Which sucks a lot, because when Loki said predator he _meant_ predator; if anything he was downplaying the size of the teeth.

Holy hell, and the thing is _fast_. Tony has no idea what it even _is_ ; all he can see are more than four legs – five, one of which where the tail is, what the hell? – white fur and those teeth. He gets a real nice view of those actually because the thing spots him, opens its mouth wide and _shrieks_ , it's a sound straight from hell or something. Yeah, fuck that, Tony is out of here.

Except the fucking thing is apparently powered by a Ferrari engine or something because it _chases him_ and it's fast as hell. Tony must look like a really tasty meal and to be honest, he panics a little, speeds up and goes higher and continues on even after he's pretty sure he lost the thing.

It doesn't occur to him until he's calmed down a little that fur, bigger than a dog, no babies, he totally could have killed that for Loki. Hell no is his first thought to that, but what the heck did he expect? He's going to have to kill something and unless he wants to come back with some sort of dog-sized bunny (which will blow absolutely zero minds and this is a matter of pride, damn it) he needs to think about the logistics of this whole hunting thing.

He has two options. The first one is, stab the hell out of it and hope he hits something vital and doesn't get injured or eaten in the process. It will damage the fur and also be dangerous. Option two is, use his repulsors that aren't just for flying. Technically it's not against the rules but Tony figures that considering the no magic rule, it's bending them quite a bit; he already decided yesterday not to use those.

So, Option Stab is the only way to go. Great. First Tony needs to manage not to panic and flee, though, which is apparently more difficult than he had thought. Maybe he should-

No, damn it, he's going to catch something big enough to make a coat out of. Not that Loki seems to need even one, much less two, but furs are clearly serious business here on Jötunheimr and Tony is not going to start out with a consolation price just because he's a little scared. Especially not after the admittedly a little arrogant promise he made Loki.

Mind-blowing, Tony tells himself and flies lower to the ground again, paying closer attention to the scanner.

Which shows... nothing. Confused, Tony pauses, hovering in the air a little, but the scanner shows nothing, just blank, even-colored, dark blue space with almost no distinction in color. The scanner can't be broken, it was working just a minute ago, but the evenness of the color is seriously weird. Even discarding the small animals earlier, the ground hadn't been that consistent in tone. Puzzled and curious, Tony lowers down until he touches the ground. It looks... well, white, being ice and all, with a slight light blue tint, and it's a lot more even than the ground where Tony lifted off. Except for a few weird spikes coming out of the ground at an acute angle, like-

Tony realizes where he is at the same time as something moves on the thermal vision, distracting him thoroughly; it's like the whole dark blue ground shifts except that's impossible, and not happening besides. The ice Tony is standing on is completely unmoving, but the scanner still shows it moving which is weird, really weird. Maybe the scanner really is broken, though Tony can't think of what kind of malfunction could cause-

There's a cracking sound followed immediately by a jolt in the ice under Tony; he and the ice are lifted up and he loses his balance, lands on his side at the same time as the ice he's lying on splinters and breaks around him and he drops a little, just a few inches but suddenly it gets darker around him and Tony looks up and there are- _teeth_ , fucking teeth as long as his forearm, a gleaming row and it's like in slow-motion as Tony watches the teeth close in on another row because he's in a fucking _mouth_ , Jesus Christ, a maw is closing up above him.

With a swiftness born from a mixture of adrenaline and sudden, mind-numbing terror, Tony activates his repulsors and shoots upwards from his reclined position, a move he didn't practice so of course it doesn't go off without a hitch. He bumps against the mouth's side but at least he's upright now and can utilize the full power of his repulsors; at the last minute he shoots upwards and out. And it's seriously the last possible moment because as it is he rams against the spikes of teeth, breaking a couple off and quite possibly damaging the suit's shoulder and side a little but Jesus, he couldn't care less right now as he shoots upwards, up and fucking away from almost being _eaten_ , fuck. The thing that almost swallowed him up shrieks in outrage as he escapes but Tony just continues up, up up until the scanner beeps in warning because it's range doesn't include the ground anymore. Tony pauses then, hovering mid-air and panting heavily.

Jesus fuck. So, Loki was not kidding with the teeth and the worry. Also, this place is fucking dangerous and Tony severely underestimated just how much so.

He takes a couple of minutes to calm the fuck down until his breathing is a little more even. His hands are trembling but since they're inside the gloves he ignores that and deems himself calmed down. Still he's careful as fuck as he slowly flies down again, staring at the ice as it comes into view again. At one point he drifted a little away but he finds the hole the thing came out of relatively easily. The water is dark, broken pieces of ice swimming in there but the thing is gone. Carefully, Tony flies a little closer but all the scanner shows the even, unbroken tone in color again.

Bloody hell, though. Tony might never let his feet touch the ground again until he's absolutely sure he isn't above water anymore.

As he flies closer to the hole, Tony detects something else; a few dark, elongated shapes lying scattered on the ice next to the hole. It takes Tony a second to realize what they are – the teeth. And they're rusty red in color, even, not stained but like that's the color of the thing's bones. Tony stares at them for a moment, belated terror gripping him again as he sees that they're seriously as long as the long blade Loki lent him.

Damn it. He's definitely going to keep one, if only as proof to himself that this really happened. At one time or the other in his life he thought he was close to death, but he's never been as close as this and hopefully never will again.

It might take him five minutes to gather the courage to fly up to the hole, splitting his attention between the visual image of it and the thermal overlay of the scanner. Neither show anything out of the ordinary, and eventually Tony manages to reach down and snatch two of those teeth before he shoots upwards again, up and away from the scene of this stupid incident.

He flies around aimlessly for a bit, the teeth he picked up tucked under the belt Loki lent him. There is no change in the light conditions, the sky remains gray and the wind even let up a little, but still almost three hours passed already since he got started and Tony is nowhere close to catching anything. Then and there, he makes the decision that the next bigger than a dog thing he comes across is going to be it.

Which turns out to be a bit unfortunate, because when he eventually spots a thing – he's flying over a vaguely mountainous landscape that possibly belongs to the mountain under which Loki's people live – it's huge. It's equipped with only two arms, but very long and very strong ones that end in wicked claws, and instead of having a head, it's face or rather the eyes and the maw are located in basically the belly, in the middle between the two arms. Sort of like an octopus, Tony thinks, staring in horrified fascination as the thing swings itself up a wicked looking glacier. Or a spider-monkey, what with the way it moves, but it's huge, at least the size of a small car. Which is a little better than the elephant-sized thing from before, and while the maw on this thing looks wicked with lots of sharp, pointed teeth it's at least not the arm-long teeth of the fish-thing.

Tony is so preoccupied staring and feeling horrified that he doesn't realize what the thing is doing until it suddenly hurls itself straight off the glacier and suddenly it's gliding towards him as swift as an arrow, aided by flaps of skin that suddenly unfolded as it launched itself towards where Tony is hovering. As it attacks it makes a sound like a roaring engine which shouldn't be as terrifying as it is. Tony maybe shrieks a little and evades, but at the last moment he realizes that this is his chance, this thing is attacking him already anyway, he might as well use the opportunity while it presents itself to him. Quickly he pulls the sword out of the sheath and sort of wildly hacks towards the thing while twisting out of the way, aiming for the wing while simultaneously trying to avoid the claws and that maw.

Miraculously, somehow he manages to hit something; he feels a slight resistance against the blade but then the moment is already over, having lasted less than a fraction of a second. And then Tony is hovering in the air above the thing, which roars, one gliding wing sporting a sizeable cut that makes it completely useless. It tries to balance out with the other glider but is already spinning off-course wildly, quickly gaining speed as it flies a curve and crashes straight on into the glacier wall. For a moment Tony thinks it's going to grab on and be okay but the crash either knocks it out or disorients it for long enough that it can't use the split second that could save its life, and, still driven by the force of the impact, it bounces off again and then plunges straight for its death, landing on the ground below with a dull thud and not moving again.

Tony winces, feeling vaguely guilty. He just killed something, or at least played a significant part in the events that lead to its death. Sure, it attacked him, but still. He does feel a little bad about it, he never really thought about where the steak on his plate comes from but all of a sudden... except steak is made of cows, and cows look a lot nicer than this thing. Their teeth are less horrible too, and they don't have claws like that, wicked and curved like a sloth's.

Besides, this is the circle of life and all that. It's not like he's doing this for fun; he's getting a fur coat for Loki which is important and also, this thing will be made into food. This is not like shooting wolves from a helicopter.

Okay. So Tony has done this thing, great. Now, though, he suddenly finds himself faced with a matter he didn't consider before: how to transport this thing? Dragging it doesn't sound ideal, the least of which because it would mean having to walk, and also it would probably damage the fur. But Tony highly doubts that he'll be able to lift it off and fly with all that extra weight.

He's only going to find out by trying, though, so he cautiously approaches the thing and pokes it with the sword a little, poised to fly off if it moves at all. It doesn't so much as twitch, its black beady eyes staring sightlessly up into the sky, so it probably is really dead. Lifting it turns out to not be an option, as he had thought, but it's far less heavy than he would have thought; going by the size he would have expected the weight of a small car but of course, it wouldn't be able to do its gliding thing if it were that heavy. It must have hollow bones or something.

Eventually Tony figures something out; he pulls the thing's arms around until they're lying straight, pointing towards the top. Then he uses the belt, hooking it into the curve of the claws, and starts half flying, half dragging the thing straight back to the location from which he started.

It takes ages, not only because Tony can't go as fast but also because now he can't just fly high and above everything. He still manages to skip a few crevasses and canyons but it slows him down even further. The most difficult part, though, is that he'll have to fly above the frozen ocean again. He probably could find a way around but it would take a lot longer. The dragging goes easier there because the ice is mostly smooth – not ice-skating smooth but it's a lot more of an even surface than the mountainous landscape he and the thing come from – but it's utterly nerve-racking. Tony fears every second that the fish thing or something like it will attack him from below again but there is no possible way to go faster than he already is. Briefly, he considers leaving the thing behind and coming back with somebody who can carry it for him but he highly doubts it'll still be here when he gets back, and besides which the thought of needing somebody's help galls him.

In the end the trip takes him three hours, as long as it took to get there and find the thing despite the fact that on the way back he takes no detours or breaks. Physically it's a lot more exhausting than he had expected too because he has to keep the same position and he either pulls the thing with one arm or he flies backwards and drags it with two, except there are still the two teeth of the fish-thing that he's absolutely too stubborn to leave behind. The suit takes a lot of the strain off him and provides a lot of physical strength – on his own Tony doubts he'd be able to even lift the arms, much less drag the whole thing – but still.

When he gets to the point he started at he briefly considers, then with a sigh sets down on his feet and starts walking, dragging the thing along. He could fly and is half of a mind to, but he isn't really in the mood for a grand entrance or anything. He just wants to get this thing there, wants for Loki to tell him he did good (if he did anything wrong Tony's going to _scream_ and probably throw a manly temper tantrum or something), wants something to eat and then he wants to sleep. He doesn't even care about the blowing promises anymore, neither the minds nor the other things.

The first person to spot him is some Jötnar guy around his age, probably also involved in the bonding part of the hunt. He's carrying three of the dog-sized things, one over his shoulders and two under his arms, as if quantity makes up for quality, but who knows. Maybe they're a delicacy and the thing Tony found is poisonous and he could have had it so much easier.

The guy is walking ahead and when he sees Tony and the thing he's dragging he shrieks and drops two of the dog-things to grasp at his chest and stumble backwards. It's a pretty dramatic reaction and any other day would be funny, but right now Tony is only grumpy and hungry and exhausted, so really not in the mood.

"A little help?" Tony calls out.

The guy stares at him for a moment, then turns around and runs away. Great. So clearly Tony did something wrong.

He so, so has enough of this. Absolutely fed-up, he stops walking and drops the belt. Then he sits down on the ground, because he might as well. The guy dropped two of his dog-things, he's got to come back after he already went through the trouble of catching three.

Tony maybe, possibly zones out a little, because next thing he knows some adult Jötnar is stepping up to him, first looking at him then at the thing, expression complicated. He has his hands stemmed into his hips and is pretty much just staring, not wide-eyed, but still surprised and with a fair amount of disbelief as well. "Did you catch this?"

Eyes narrowing, Tony gets to his feet again. Nobody mentioned that other people might be inclined to steal his thing, but who knows? "Yes."

The guy stares a little longer, then inclines his head. He's not alone, Tony suddenly notices, there are three other guys with him, both of which look somewhere between surprised and maybe slightly reluctantly respectful. It's all a bit weird, how nobody says anything, but then a figure Tony is pretty sure is Loki appears suddenly, unexpectedly on top of a snow drift. He stands there for a moment, too far away for his expression to be decipherable, and then he starts running straight for Tony.

When he gets there his expression is floored. "You caught me a hämähäkki."

Tony blinks, then grimaces and a little reluctantly takes the helmet off. Right now he's hot underneath the suit from all the exercise but in the temperatures here that will probably change very rapidly. He wants Loki to see his face though, he isn't really used to this whole expression being hidden thing. "If that's what this is." He gestures backwards with his thumb.

Loki stares for a moment. "You went very far, then. Towards the mountain range."

As if he would know the area. Scowling, Tony shrugs. "There was some water, and then there was a little bit of mountains. Some glaciers."

Again Loki stares at him for a handful of seconds. Tony suddenly notes that the three guys who came along are not coming closer, that they've been keeping a distance from him and the thing this whole time.

Eventually Tony huffs. "So, what? Is this thing poisonous or something? You told me I had to watch out for babies and fur. No babies, fur." He gestures backwards again. "So?"

Loki takes a deep breath. "Of course, you don't-" Suddenly he's stepping up to Tony, grabbing his face with both hands, eyes wide and bright. "Tony, this is- hämähäkit are very rare. They are very- did you touch its fur?"

Confused but still grumpy, Tony shakes his head, and suddenly Loki is grabbing his wrist and guiding his hand down to the thing's arm. He touches the fur – or rather, the suit's glove touches the fur – and nothing happens. Not that he expected explosions or whatever, but he would have thought something would happen, going by Loki's reaction.

Except... narrowing his eyes, he leans a little closer, but it's not him, the fur is definitely- it's turning red, the color of his glove. At first just the area around where Tony is touching it, but the color wanders down the arm until it's encompassing half of it, the fur's color changing from white over pink to Tony's suit's deep red from the elbow down. The change is gradual, not as abrupt and picturesque as when Loki changes color; it happens slowly but still fast enough that Tony can watch it happen. "Uh," he makes. "So... this is good?"

"This is immense, Tony," Loki's voice says right next to his ear. "Hämähäkkit are rare and elusive, hard to find."

Tony can see that, actually; with its back turned to the viewer it's just expands of white or rather, environment-colored fur. "Okay... so in other words, I did a good job." Maybe he needs a little reassurance after the emotional roller-coaster of the past couple hours, sue him.

"You did a phenomenal job," Loki immediately says, pressing a kiss to Tony's temple. He lets go of Tony's wrist in order to cup Tony's face with both hands, turns him a little so the next kiss goes to Tony's lips. Now Tony can see Loki's expression as well, which is bright and soft, somehow. "I am very honored by this gift," Loki murmurs, quietly and intimately, just for Tony. His cheeks are flushed dark but his eyes are looking straight into Tony's as he continues, "I am honored to be your intended."

Tony swallows and feels his own cheeks heat as well. "Uh, I'm glad. That. You know, me too."

Loki smiles, sweet and delighted, and leans in for another kiss. In a moment he will let go and they will drag the thing back together, where people will stare and look at Tony with different eyes – actually _look at him_ , not look at the Midgardian or at Loki's intended. One of the people responsible for the processing of the fur is going to walk up to them, and Loki will be snotty and demand the best Rintakehä has to offer. Shortly afterwards the guy most skilled at this sort of thing will actually appear with two assistants and will skin the hämähäkki himself, surrounded by a circle of spectators watching closely. Loki will tell Tony that they don't often get to see a hämähäkki, the attention is warranted. While doing so he'll notice that Tony's cheeks are icy cold and he's starting to lose feeling in his nose, and he'll fuss a little and send somebody off to retrieve a hat for Tony. Once the hämähäkki has been skinned Tony will be surprised (but shouldn't be) to find that only the arms are really worth eating; the body is almost weightless, made primarily of sinews and organs and bone, not much muscle at all. One of the arms, though, will be put on the bonfire, and as it grills there Loki will show Tony the thing he caught for him: a pretty large, four-legged predator equipped with claws and teeth and with very soft, black fur that will feel like downs on Tony's skin. Once Loki is satisfied that Tony is happy with this gift, Loki and Tony will settle by the bonfire grilling their food and Loki will demand Tony tell the tale of how he caught the hämähäkki thing. Since it's not such an exciting story Tony will include the parts where the one thing attacked him and then when the fish thing almost ate him, and at that part of the tale he's interrupted because apparently the ocean is severely off-limits during this season because of the fish-things (called lohenpunainen, apparently) and Tony will have to produce the two teeth as proof. Escaping the lohenpunainen is next to impossible, apparently, because they target their prey from very far below and are very good at adjusting the angle should somebody run off, not that most people even have the chance to realize they're being targeted before they're suddenly ambushed from below like Tony was. The teeth as proof – Loki will look conflicted between delight and belated terror at Tony's near miss – will turn out to be the last drop; people will look at Tony not only with surprise, but with real respect and even something like pride. "They will tell this tale for many years to come," Loki will whisper into Tony's ear, and they will share one of the thing's arms, a couple of cuts from the thing Loki caught (called petoeläin, and Tony will really look forwards to when he will get this Allspeak but Loki will tell him they'll do that tomorrow, they'll do everything tomorrow), and the rest of their catches will be wrapped up for later. Nobody else will eat what they caught for each other. People will come to congratulate them and pay their respects, and apparently all it takes is a hunt and a sharing of the food for them to be bonded, something which Tony, dead on his feet, will really appreciate.

They will go to bed in Tony's room under Loki's birth fur, and after such a long day no blowing of anything will commence, but how Tony wakes up the next day is a different story.

**Author's Note:**

> Loki and Laufey's greeting was shamelessly borrowed from Stargate Atlantis, where it's the standard Athosian greeting.  
> All the names are taken from Finnish (google) translations, my apologies if anything sounds off, please let me know if that's the case. Translations are here:
> 
> Keskikesä = Finnish name for the Midsummer festival (as it was called pre-Christianity)  
> Ydin = core  
> Juuri = root  
> Sydän = heart  
> Yläpää = top, head (if you want to [listen to how it's pronounced](http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/italian-english/cima). Btw, the reason Tony says this word is 60% made up of umlauts is because he doesn't know how it's spelled and the y sounds like an ü)  
> Pörssikeinottelija = bear (that's what google says but it's wrong, this is totally a Finnish in-joke (that I don't really get ;) about somebody doing something shady with other people's money and stocks)  
> Maha = stomach  
> Hämähäkki = spider  
> Lohenpunainen = salmon (the colour, not the fish)  
> Petoeläin = predator  
> Rintakehä = chest, thorax (the name of the mountain/settlement)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who helped me out making the Finnish a little less wrong, I really appreciate it! :)


End file.
